


The Dream Trap

by flynnparadox



Category: A Nightmare on Elm Street (Movies 1984-1994)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, F/F, Teen Romance, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:35:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 60,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28258551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flynnparadox/pseuds/flynnparadox
Summary: Fall, 1986. Before there were Dream Warriors, there were ripples in the water. Pre-echoes. Effect before Cause. How did the Elm St. kids whittle down to such a small group by the time that 1987 rolled around?A group of friends - and new allies - band together in order to survive their own boogeyman. The senior class of Springwood High might just not make it to college.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. Jesse Checks Out, Jill Checks In/The Elm Street Kids

Prologue: Jesse Checks Out, Jill Checks In

The theater was dark and dank, the print was scratched to hell, and though she was all by herself, Jill Snyder was laughing her ass off.  
It was past one in the morning and the midnight movie at the old Valiant Theater - The Evil Dead - was really picking up steam. Jill took another hit of her roach and giggled some more. She truly loved this movie and seeing it stoned was - at the moment, it seemed - the best idea she had ever had. Pity there was no one to share it with. Bobby had to get up early for practice, Gale and Eric had other plans.  
The theater was a rathole, run down, dingy and dirty but Jill wouldn't have it any other way. No matter how bad the theater was, whenever the lights went down and the movie started up, she was always transported to another world, a world sometimes lit by a rather dim bulb but always existing at 24 frames per second. It was magical, really.  
The Valiant was a single screen theater for much of its history but had been converted to a two-screener six years ago. Jill was in the smaller theater, while the tiresome Rocky Horror Picture Show was unspooling in the larger theater. Jill was sure that theater was filled. It was a more popular midnight movie for some reason.  
Jill took another hit, laughed, and dropped the roach.  
"Shit," she said and got on her hands and knees on the grimy theater floor. She saw a little glowing ember under her seat and reached out to retrieve it.  
That was when she saw the shoes.  
There was nothing out of the ordinary about the shoes themselves. It was the fact that there was someone else in the theater with her. She was sure she had come in alone and she hadn't heard anyone come in during the film. But there was definitely someone here, someone sitting in the seat directly behind her.  
Slowly, cautiously, she got up on her knees to peer at this other movie patron. She didn't know why she should be afraid to look but she was.  
Turns out that she was right to be.  
Peering over the theater seats like a frightened child, Jill saw that the other person was someone she knew.  
His name was Jesse Walsh, he went to the same high school as she did, and, right now, he did not look well.  
Her terror rose. She considered running - just booking it out of the theater as fast as she could - but she was frozen in place.  
Despite all she had heard about Jesse recently, despite the terror she felt looking at him, there was something in his face, a look of hopelessness, that kept her from running.  
He was staring at the screen - no, that wasn't right. He was staring through the screen, as if hypnotized. But that look of sadness, of hopelessness, was certainly there, she hadn't imagined it.  
Jill mustered up all the courage she was capable of and spoke.  
"Jesse?" she said.  
He didn't respond, didn't even look at her.  
"Jesse," Jill continued, "they...they say you killed a bunch of people. Lisa, Grady, Kerry, all those people at that...pool party massacre. Even your family, your parents! Tell me it's not true. Tell me!"  
Jesse was sweating profusely, unnaturally so, Jill noticed.  
She could see it in his hair and running down his face.  
Then she saw his clothes. They were completely soaked.  
When she realized that her eyes were running and the sweet smell of marijuana left her nostrils and was replaced with a noxious, potent smell, she knew it wasn't water that was covering Jesse.  
It was gasoline.  
Jesse finally stopped looking at the screen and looked straight into her eyes.  
"He'll get you, too," he said.  
And then the gasoline pouring out of his shoes touched Jill's still-lit joint under the seat and Jesse went up like a candle.  
Fire engulfed his body and his seat. The heat was instantly intense and Jill fell onto her ass.  
She took another look at this scary, sad boy before running and, for a moment, she thought she saw another figure standing over him, a demonic yet somehow playful silhouette.  
Then she got to her feet and ran, never looking back.

Chapter One: The Elm Street Kids

Fall, 1986

1

"I see it every night when I close my eyes," Jill said. "It's burned into my brain. If you cut my head open right now, you'd see it on the inside of my skull, like a fucking burn on toast. Is that normal, after all these months?"  
"Of course it is," Dr. Saunders said. "This is not something that will just disappear with a snap of your fingers. This is not magic we're talking about, after all."  
"Magic might work better. Or maybe drugs."  
They were sitting in Dr. Saunders office, a bright, open room with good light. Jill always chose to sit opposite the psychiatrist, eschewing the convention of lying down on a couch during these sessions.  
Dr. Saunders was in her forties, an attractive redhead immaculately dressed in a suit. Jill was a senior at Springwood High with black hair. She was pretty, with a deep, husky voice, but her eyes were bright with intelligence. There was something going on behind those eyes that wasn't quite clear to anyone looking at her.  
"We've discussed drugs," Dr. Saunders said. "In fact, I've discussed it with your father."  
"God, what else have you discussed with my father?" Jill asked. "Don't we have some kind of doctor/patient confidentiality thing?"  
"We do and I have not directly discussed anything you and I have talked about in this room. However, we have discussed drugs and both he and I are against them. He may not know about the recreational drugs you partake in but I do and I don't want to prescribe anything if you are going to continue using."  
"Recreational drugs. You make it sound like I'm some addict. Like I'm on heroin or coke. Recreational drug, not drugs. I smoke weed, doc, that's it. I like weed. Hell, I don't even drink very much. You know that."  
"I meant no offense."  
A moment of silence passed between them. Jill nervously fiddled with her black wristband as Dr. Saunders sat still, watching her. Finally, the doctor broke the silence.  
"How are your friends?" she asked.  
"They're good," Jill said.  
"Supportive?"  
"Yes," Jill sighed. "You and your little therapist terms. Supportive. They're there for me, okay? Like friends are supposed to be."  
"That's what supportive means."  
"I know. I just don't think any of them would put it that way."  
"Bobby?"  
"Bobby's good," Jill said, not looking at Dr. Saunders.  
"But..."  
"But he looks at me differently."  
"Looks at you how?"  
"Like I'm different since I saw it."  
"You are different."  
"I guess. We're good, it's fine. I like him, he likes me. I should be so lucky to get a football player for a boyfriend."  
"Are you having sex?"  
"Whoa," Jill said. Now she looked at the doctor. "Just like that, huh? I was beginning to think you were like an anti-Freudian or something. Or that you were afraid of sex. This is the first time you've asked me about it."  
"It seemed like the right time," Dr. Saunders said. "Is it?"  
Jill nodded.  
"Yeah," she said. "We're sexually active, to use one of your terms."  
"How long now?"  
"Not long. A week."  
"And you were the one who initiated it." It wasn't a question and Dr. Saunders' eyes burned into Jill.  
"Well, I mean he obviously wanted to as well," Jill said. "But, yeah, I guess it was me. I thought it was time."  
"Did you have a particular goal in mind?"  
"You mean besides wanting to jump his bones? I mean, have you seen him? He's like a stallion or something."  
"Yes, besides that. You didn't have sex with him to convince him you were just like any other girl, did you? You didn't, shall we say, give it away just because he was looking at you differently, did you?"  
"Well, I'm not different than any other girl, right? What's special about me? I'm not strange, right?"  
"No, you're not strange."  
"Wow, weighing in, are we? That was pretty definitive, doc. Okay, I feel better. Job well done."  
"What about your other friends?"  
"Gale seems a little sad these days. Don't know what it is. We talk all the time but she hasn't mentioned it. Figure it must be boy trouble. Some asshole was probably mean to her. Like they always are. Course, the shaved head doesn't help. But I think it's a good look for her. Eric is Eric. He makes me laugh. And he's also friends with Bobby so there isn't that awkwardness that there sometimes is when you've got a friend who's a boy but he's not your boyfriend, know what I mean?"  
Dr. Saunders said nothing for a moment. Then, "And Maria?"  
"Oh, here we go again," Jill said. "Maria is my friend, all right? She is."  
"Drug dealers aren't friends, Jill. They just want your money."  
"What and she can't be both? She can't be my friend and also want money from me when I want weed? You know, you live in this perfect little world but, you know what, you've got blinders on. You've got tunnel-vision. All you see is what's right in front of you and you can't accept that people can't all fit in your little view, your little box that you like to lock up."  
"I'm not the one seeing a psychiatrist, Jill."  
"Oh, that's cold. You also didn't see a kid burn himself alive right in front of you."  
"A murderer."  
Jill shook her head.  
"No one believes me," she said. "I'm telling you, he didn't do it. He did not kill all those people."  
"All the evidence was there, Jill," Dr. Saunders said. "You have to come out of this fantasy. Jesse Walsh was a murderer. A mass murderer."  
"I looked into his eyes! He was sad but he was no killer. He was scared to death in those last moments."  
"He was scared because the police were closing in on him. His time was short so he chose a way out, a way out that would be remembered, just like his crimes."  
"If that's true then why did he choose me? Huh? Why?"  
"Because you were there."  
"There's still so much that doesn't make sense. I don't know how I didn't notice the gasoline, for one, or where it came from."  
"You were high at the time."  
"Right, but I'm never THAT high. Also, I've read the same newspaper reports that you did. You remember when the cops had him cold, I mean stone cold cornered? There was no way he could get out of that manhunt they had assembled. They tracked him to that hotel, right? They knew he was there, just knew. Eyewitnesses, numerous phone calls, I mean he was there. No doubt. And they rush in and he's gone. Just gone. Door bolted, window sealed shut, like a fucking locked-room mystery. How do you explain that?"  
"I sense the hand of sensationalist journalism. Nothing more."  
"No, something was going on. I've read stuff, talked to people. There was more to Jesse than any of us know."  
"I'm sure there was. Like all murderers."  
A tear trickled down Jill's cheek. Just one - she had it under control almost instantly.  
"I just feel like we were connected somehow," she said. "I think he chose me deliberately."  
"Did you ever talk to him at school?" Dr Saunders asked. "Were you friendly with him?"  
"No. Not many people were. He didn't make friends easy."  
"You feel like there was a connection between the two of you because there was: you saw him die. You were the only person you saw him die. It was his very last moment, his last act. There is a connection between the two of you, Jill, but that's all it is. You were the witness he needed to complete his life. And I'm sorry that it was you."  
"Yeah, maybe that's it. I don't know anymore. I've been pretty out of it a lot of the time."  
"Sleeping well?"  
"No."  
"Bad dreams?"  
"Sometimes."  
"We discussed dreams when you first started coming to me. If I remember correctly, you're a lucid dreamer, aren't you?"  
"Yes."  
"Then why not change the dream when it starts to go bad? Make the monster explode or fight it?"  
"It's getting harder. There are some nights when I don't even know I'm dreaming, which almost never used to be the case. I've been controlling dreams since I was nine. It sucks. Plus, I never really see the monster. He's always..."  
"He?"  
"I'm sure he's a guy but I've never seen him. He scares me, doc. And that shouldn't happen. Not to me, at least."  
"We have to continue next week," Dr. Saunders said, standing up. "We've gone over our hour."  
Jill nodded and stood up as well. She shook hands with Dr. Saunders.  
"Thanks for listening, doc," she said.  
Dr. Saunders nodded and showed Jill to the door.  
Dr. Saunders' office was on the top floor of a strange, winding four-story building and Jill liked to walk instead of taking the elevator. As she made her way out of the building, she mused on her dreams.  
The dreamscape was different than anything she had ever before experienced. It was a series of connecting rooms, rundown and vandalized. At first, it was fairly normal - a scary, deserted house, yes, but normal - but as the dream progressed, however, the spaces became more surreal, more paradoxical. And there was always that feeling that she was being pursued, that something was after her. She didn't remember much else about the dreams beyond that. It was frustrating because she did want to discuss them with Dr. Saunders. Despite her prickly relationship with her, she felt that the doctor was helping her in the long run.  
The staircase down from Dr. Saunders' office was odd, the winding stairs somehow different from every other staircase Jill had ever seen. The space seemed more confined somehow, like the walls were collapsing in on her. Picking up speed, she got out of the staircase, the building and down the street, onto the short walk home.  
Her appointment was after school and it was now early evening, a cool, pleasant Friday night. She had the whole weekend ahead of her. Maybe she could wrangle up Bobby or perhaps Gale to do something tonight.  
She turned a corner and emerged onto Elm Street, her street. It was a long, straight road, tree-lined. Nice. And yet, there was something about it, something hidden. Arcane.  
Looking up, past the trees, she noticed a girl in a second storey window, dancing like a robot to some music that Jill couldn't hear. The girl was rather strange-looking: blonde hair with black streaks in it, dark, expressive makeup. Grave Wave, for sure.  
Jill knew the girl by name - Tiffany - but didn't really know her in any meaningful sense of the word. She nodded to her in the halls at school, that sort of thing. She smiled and kept on walking.  
She stopped at Maria's house - 1419 Elm - almost approached it but decided against it. She didn't have enough money on her for weed, anyway.  
She heard something, a rhythmic slapping sound. Rope hitting concrete? She frowned and turned towards the sound, which came from across the street. She saw nothing, no indication of the source of the sound. But she knew roughly where it came from. She didn't want to look up at it but she did anyway. There it was: 1428 Elm. Jesse's old house.  
The House.  
It had started to build itself a nice little reputation around town, certainly among the residents of Elm Street, at least. An empty house, a home now only to madness and murder. Murders, Jill corrected herself. Murders, as in multiple. She shuddered and kept walking.  
Continuing down the street, Jill reached her house in only a few minutes. The house in question was one of the nicer houses on the block, a well-maintained two-storey affair, with a fence around the yard. Jill unlocked the gate and made the short walk up to the house. Inside, she was greeted by an empty, dark house; her father must have stayed late at the paper. Only creaks and dustmites were here to keep her company. She headed into the kitchen to rustle up something to eat.

2

In his dreams, Eric Tate could fly. High above this backwards, provincal town, with its pathetic downtown and lousy nightlife, above the industrial section, with its boiler rooms spewing out toxic fumes and green death. He soared through the clouds, which in his dreams were always white and puffy, almost cotton candy. He banked, headed towards the high school, where he dropped a water balloon full of piss on the principal, who shook his fist in anger at him.  
Eric laughed and continued on his way, dropping lower still, into the downtown area. It was kids stuff: a few bars and clubs, all of them either too tame to bother entering, others too adult to let teenagers in. In reality, Eric was doomed, either way. But in his dreams, the place was livelier, with cooler people around, not just posers or those druggies that were truly dangerous.  
He landed deftly on his feet, as he always did, strutted through the streets, as he always did, was gawked at and admired, like he always was. He passed Taryn, who in reality was a pretty girl who was hardly ever in school because she was in this part of town, constantly doped up, but in his dream was a kind of leather-clad, punk goddess, with a high mohawk and a pair of switchblades. He nodded to her and she smiled back at him. Passing her by, he patted her on the shoulder and headed towards his goal.  
She was at the end of the alley, all dolled up but still strong, still capable of fending off all who came at her: Steph. In reality, he didn't even know her last name, had only seen her around town, always on the arm of her bad news boyfriend, Drake. But here, in his dream, she adored him and sometimes, when he felt like it, would sleep with him.  
He approached her now, both of them smiling all the way. Her red hair was elaborately fixed and high, her bangs like bat wings. Her lipstick was bright red, the color of blood in the movies.  
This was his favorite part. Now he would reach her, pull out a cigarette like James Fucking Dean and lean into her and ask, "Got a light?" And she would respond, like she always did, with, "Always for you, tiger."  
Here it comes.  
He reached her, produced the cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, leaned in. Like a movie star.  
"Got a light?" he asked.  
She smiled at him, her face lovely with movie star good looks, her big eyes wide and lit with the perfect key light. Then the smile became a sneer.  
"Why the fuck would I want to waste a match on a dried-up bag of shit like you?" she asked.  
For a second, Eric didn't register what she had said and he leaned in more, expecting her to produce a match and light his cigarette. Then it hit him.  
"What?" he said.  
She didn't answer, just kept smiling and walked away, disappearing into an alley Eric hadn't seen before. The neon sign above him kept flashing. "Jake's Bar," it read. The neon light illuminated a spot on the wall perpendicular to him, almost as if it were highlighting the graffiti there.  
And what graffiti?! Among the usual gang tags was a stylized, rather quite beautiful silhouette: a figure hunched over, hand extended up from his side - and it was a he, that much was clear - nails like knives. The overall color was a striped pattern of red and green, topped off by what looked like a brown hat. A fedora, perhaps?  
As he was looking, he felt a presence behind him. Someone was standing right behind him. He whirled around - ready for just about anything, the way this dream was going - and the figure behind him pounced, attacked, a hand tipped with razors coming towards him. Eric was dead, he knew it.  
"Eric!" a voice called.  
Eric's eyes popped open as he snapped awake. He looked around, disoriented. He was home, at his desk in his room. He had fallen asleep at the desk - it had been a long day - one cheek flat against the desk, sticky with sweat.  
"Eric!" the voice called again.  
"What, ma?!" he said.  
"Your dinner's getting cold!"  
"Alright, alright, I'm coming."  
He was dreaming, the usual dream about Steph, but something had happened, something had gone wrong. But what? He couldn't quite remember, but he didn't like it.  
Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he got up from his desk and headed into the kitchen. He was tall, a little lanky, with red hair, spiked above his head. The house was small and his bedroom was practically right off the kitchen and living room.  
His mother sat at the tiny kitchen table, a cigarette in her mouth. The table had been sparsely set: two plates adorned with unheathly-looking steak and a sprinkling of greens; a bowl of beans in the middle of the table.  
Eric joined her at the table, picked at the greens with his fork. They ate in silence for a few moments. Then, his mother:  
"Going out tonight?"  
"I don't know," Eric said. "Maybe. If I hear from Jill or Bobby. Riley, maybe."  
"Well, I don't want you taking the car."  
"When can I get my own car?"  
"When you get a damn job and earn enough money to buy one."  
"Riley's dad bought him a car."  
"Well, maybe your dad could have bought you a car, too, if he hadn't gone and got himself killed."  
"Nice, mom. Good one."  
They didn't talk much after that.

3

It was nearly midnight when Gale O'Connor showed up at Jill's house. Jill knew she was coming even before she rang the doorbell installed in the gate in the fence around the house: her loud, backfiring clunker of a car gave her away.  
Jill opened the front door, leaned against the doorframe, arms folded across her chest. She made no effort to walk down the path and let Gale in, but just stared at her.  
Gale stood at the gate, looking exactly the same as she always did: short, 5'1", wearing jeans and a simple white T-shirt under a brown leather jacket, pretty but odd, mainly due to her head, which was shaved bald. Her hands were tucked into her jacket pockets.  
"Well?" she asked, almost shouted.  
"Well?" Jill said back.  
"Beefy Boy?"  
"It's almost midnight."  
"The drive-thru will be open, always is on the weekends. Come on, it's not like you've got a curfew or anything. I don't see your dad's car in the driveway."  
Jill smiled.  
"You know everything, don't you?" she said.  
"Pretty much," Gale said.  
Jill laughed, and went to get her keys and a light jacket. A few minutes later and they were cruising through Springwood, speeding through mainly residential streets, the top down on Gale's convertible. The car had once been a stylish, hot red but was now dull and battered with age, its engine always sputtering and making lots of other, less easily identifiable noises. Boy, was it still fast, though, and Gale drove it like a maniac.  
Beefy Boy was a short drive away, a gaudy, somewhat isolated fast food joint in a mosty residential area. Gale pulled up to the drive-thru speaker box, placed their orders, and drove around to the pickup window. At the window, as he always was, was Bryan. He had their order up quick and Gale thanked him and they pulled around to the front of the restaurant to eat. The dining room was closed and they wanted a little cool night air anyway.  
"So, come on," Jill said, "tell me."  
She was sprawled across the backseat, fast food bag in her lap, burger in one hand, soda in the other. Gale was sitting across the front seat in a similar manner.  
"Tell you what?" Gale said.  
"You know," Jill said.  
"I don't. What?"  
"Come on. Your crush. I know there's somebody at school who does something for you. That nagging itch, you know."  
"I..."  
Gale shook her head, nibbled at her cheeseburger, lapsed into silence. Jill put her own burger in her lap, leaned closer to Gale across the seats and sipped on her soda.  
"There must be someone," she said.  
"Well..." Gale said.  
"Give me a name, at least."  
"Chris."  
"Chris. See, not so hard? Chris who?"  
"You...you wouldn't know..."  
"I know a lot of people."  
"But not Chris."  
Jill gave her an odd look, one eyebrow raised. She smirked.  
"Okay," she said. "You don't need to tell me anymore if you don't want to."  
Gale nodded, not looking at Jill. They ate in silence for a few moments before Gale spoke.  
"Hey," she said, "have you been sleeping okay? Recently, I mean?"  
"No," Jill said. "Keep thinking about Jesse."  
"I get it. It's just..."  
"What?"  
"Well, I keep having these nightmares. It's weird. I didn't see Jesse die but it feels like I did. You know? As if you telling me about it has made me remember it somehow. Does that make any sense?"  
"No, you're completely crazy."  
Jill laughed.  
"But, really," she said once she recovered, "I don't think it's too weird. I have talked to you about it."  
"But not a lot," Gale said. "Just here and there. And I completely understand. It probably hurts to think about it. But you've only talked about it a couple times. But it feels like I was in that theater, too. In my nightmares, I'm buying popcorn at the Valiant, and the concession stand is...dirty. It's covered in shit and blood but the girl working the counter is immaculate...beautiful, you know? But she's hiding something. Her smile seems forced. And there's this door behind her...behind the counter, right? One that isn't there in real life. And its banging, like someone...or something...is trying to get out."  
"Pretty intense."  
"Yeah. So I buy my popcorn and go into the theater."  
"Which screen?"  
"The smaller one. Screen two. I go into the theater and sit down right next to the only other person in the theater. And its Jesse. He smiles when I sit down and starts eating my popcorn. Right out of my bag. Like he's my date, you know?"  
"Yeah."  
"And he's acting weird. Smiling too much. He's hiding something, too. Like the concession girl. And me."  
"Then what happens?"  
"Then I notice that what he's pulling out of the bag of popcorn and popping into his mouth isn't popcorn."  
"What is it?"  
"It's eyes. Eyeballs. Whole eyeballs."  
"I'm eating here, Gale! Don't try to gross me out."  
"I'm just telling you the nightmare. That's all. This was just last night. I want to get it out of my head. I don't want to sleep tonight."  
"Okay, tell me more. What's the movie you're watching?"  
"Some horror movie. I remember zombies. They're shambling out of an old ice cream truck."  
"An ice cream truck, like a neighborhood one?"  
"Yeah."  
"Are they dressed like ice cream men?"  
"Fuck you."  
Jill laughed.  
"I'm sorry," she said. "Just being thorough. So, go on."  
"Well, the movie switches to another scene and suddenly I'm onscreen."  
"You mean, the dream changes and you're now in the movie."  
"No, I'm still watching the movie from the theater but I'm also in the movie, if that makes sense. Onscreen, I'm performing on stage, I'm singing in a metal band. And the band's great. Really bitchin. There's this girl on lead guitar with a mohawk and this other girl dancing sort of crazy, like a robot or something."  
"Cool. Bunch of sexy guys in the audience?"  
"No, not really."  
Jill slapped her friend on the arm.  
"Way to ruin a good dream!" she said.  
Gale shook her head and smiled as she continued.  
"So the zombies break into the venue where we're playing," she said, "and we have to fight them, kill them, you know? And, back in the theater, Jesse and I are really enjoying the movie, but something's wrong. I'm being watched. I know it, the way you do in dreams. I just know it. I look left, right, behind me, nothing. I don't see anybody. Then I look down, between my legs... And there she is, Lisa Webber, one of Jesse's...victims. The one he...beheaded. She's looking up at me, head resting on the floor between my legs. I scream and look at Jesse. And he's been beheaded himself. Just a stump of a neck where his head used to be, blood spraying out of it like a fucking fountain. Then someone grabs me from behind, from the row behind me, and I wake up."  
"Well, I've lost my appetite," Jill said.  
"Yeah."  
"So what do you think it means?"  
"Your therapist is rubbing off on you."  
"I guess so," Jill said with a smile.  
"All I know is that I don't want to have the same dream tonight," Gale said. "Will you stay up with me?"  
"Of course. Sleepover!"  
"But with coffee and cigarettes instead of sleep. Let's go."  
They threw away the remains of their fast food and took off, Gale driving like a maniac once again, back to Jill's house.

4

"Ah, God, look at those tits!"  
Stanley Peters sighed, put down the issue of Fangoria like it was too painful to look at anymore. Bobby Garfield picked it up, gave the foldout of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark a good once over, nodded in approval and passed it to Eric.  
"I'm hip," Eric said. "She definitely has breasts. That I can confirm to you, my friend."  
They sat around the empty high school football field, Stanley and Bobby on the bleachers, Eric standing on the ground just below them. The high school employed a security guard, of course, but he was a drunk and lazy to boot and the three of them - as well as other teenagers, from time to time - had taken to hanging out here in the middle of the night, usually after convincing some old hobo to buy them booze. Tonight was no exception and they all took turns taking a swig from the bottle of Mad Dog as it was passed around. It was one in the morning and the town was dark enough to see the stars, which filled the sky, sparkling above them.  
Stanley had blonde hair, feathered and streaked. He wore a denim jacket that was a little too big for him, khaki pants and white high top shoes.  
Bobby was tall, built like a war horse, with dark hair and movie star good looks. His smile was infectious. Tonight, he was wearing his high school football jacket, like he did most of the time.  
"Man, I wish she did porn!" Stanley said. "Just want to see her get fucked! But no! Just some nudity in a shitty old movie. And not in the Elvira costume. I mean, what's the point? Why does God punish me so?!"  
"Calm down, kid," Eric said. "You're gonna hurt yourself."  
Bobby just smiled and took a swig from the cheap wine bottle. He passed it to Stanley.  
"I'm just frustrated is all," Stanley said.  
"But there are plenty of sexy chicks in all the skin flicks you have already," Bobby said. "Aren't they enough?"  
"No. Are you kidding me? Of course they're not enough. Why do you think I keep buying them?"  
"You like jacking off?" Eric offered.  
"Well, I do like that, it's true," Stanley said.  
They all laughed. The bottle found its way to Eric, who finished it off, tossed it into the football field.  
"Careful where you throw that," Bobby said. "I'll be running there Monday morning." He smiled.  
"Eat me," Eric said.  
"You're not my type, babe," Bobby said.  
"I would certainly hope not," Eric said.  
"Oh, I got a good one the other day," Stanley said. "You gotta borrow it, Eric. You'll love it. 'New Wave Hookers,' how does that strike your fancy?"  
"New Wave Hookers?" Eric said. "What does that even mean?"  
"I don't know," Stanley said, "but that's besides the point. It's got Traci Lords in it. Oh, man..."  
"Traci Lords?!" Eric said. "She was underage, dude, didn't you hear? That tape's illegal!"  
"Oh, and what we're doing here isn't?" Bobby said. "None of us are twenty-one."  
"See, Bobby's on my side," Stanley said.  
"I didn't say that. I'm just making a point."  
"Thanks."  
"You're welcome."  
"Where did you even buy that tape?!" Eric said. "I know that Springwood Video unloaded half their porn stock when the news broke just in case!"  
"This little place I found just down the street," Stanley said. "Small, kinda creepy, actually. Guy that works behind the counter is...weird. Wears this hat, right? A fedora, I think."  
"A fedora?"  
"Yeah. I think so."  
"Eric," Bobby said, "something wrong?"  
Eric shook his head but he was clearly shaken. Stanley laughed.  
"What is it, dude?" he said. "Someone walk over your grave or something?"  
"It's nothing," Eric said. "Just had this dream is all. And what you said made me remember something about it."  
"What did you dream?" Bobby said.  
"Probably something about big cocks to suck on or puckered assholes to eat out."  
The voice belonged to a fourth boy. The other three looked around to discover Riley Reynolds striding onto the field. He was well over six feet, black, big and tough, with strong features. He, like Bobby, also wore his football jacket. Closely behind him was Ann Franklin, also tall and sporty, pretty and strong, her long blonde hair tied back in a pony tail. She looked mischievous, slightly cruel.  
"Riley, man!" Eric said, laughing.  
He approached the man, and they did an elaborate handshake that neither of the other two boys were able to follow. Riley held a football in his hand, which he tossed into the air and caught deftly, occasionally throwing back and forth to Ann, as he spoke to them.  
"Who's your friend here?" he asked.  
"I'm Stanley," Stanley said.  
"Seen you around, man, nice to meet you."  
"Likewise."  
"This is Ann, if any of you don't know her."  
"Hi," Ann said, raised one hand in a sort of salute, then caught Riley's football with one hand.  
"Bobby," Riley said.  
"Riley," Bobby said.  
Stanley could feel the tension between them, the cold hatred just under the surface of their words, threatening to bubble up. The two stared at each other for a moment.  
"What was with that pass this morning?" Riley said. "My grandma could throw a better pass than that."  
"Maybe your grandma could catch it better than you, too," Bobby said.  
"What did you say?"  
"You heard me."  
"Hey, guys, come on," Eric said.  
"You say another word about my family," Riley said, "I swear to God--"  
Bobby stood up, pointed a finger at Riley.  
"You should be using your prayers to ask for a pair of faster feet, asshole," he said. "That fumble was completely your fault. I threw it like Joe Fucking Montana! I was perfect!"  
"Perfect my ass!" Riley said.  
He made to move towards Bobby and Eric stepped in front of him, hands raised. Ann put a hand on Riley's shoulder, holding him back.  
"Hey, brother, calm down," Eric said. "We can all be friends here. It was just a practice, man. I mean, I don't play football, I admit, but this is why you guys practice, right? To find out what works, what doesn't work, to get better? Right?"  
There was silence for a moment. Bobby and Riley stared at each other across Eric.  
"I don't know why you're friends with this lightweight," Riley said to Eric. "He's soft."  
"Soft?!" Bobby said. "That what your girlfriend said about your dick tonight?"  
"Motherfucker!" Riley said.  
"That's you, right?" Bobby said, pointing at Ann. "He's soft, right?!"  
"Oh, I'm not his girlfriend," Ann said.  
"Hey," Eric said. "Let's just get out of here, alright? We'll just cool down, maybe grab another drink? How 'bout that, huh?"  
"Whatever, man," Riley said. "I'm gonna steal that gorgeous piece of ass right out from under you, Bobby. Hear me? I'm gonna get me some of that Jill. She is fine." He stretched out the 'I' in 'fine,' exaggerated it.  
Bobby shook his head. Stanley looked at the rest of them, not knowing what was going to happen but dreading it. He knew that Eric was friends with Riley, but he was also friends with Bobby. It was a tough situation for him. So which side would he come down on if there was a fight, right here, right now?  
There was another moment of silence. Then Riley turned and walked off the field and Stanley breathed a sigh of relief. Ann smiled a nasty smile, put up her hands in a "What are you gonna do?" gesture.  
"Well, guys," she said, "it's been real."  
Then she turned and followed Riley. The two of them were off the field and gone in a matter of seconds.  
"Well, I don't know about any of you," Stanley said, "but I could use a pull right now, if you know what I mean. Ease the tension, you know?"  
"You're on your own, man," Eric said, laughing.  
Bobby laughed a little, too. A few minutes later, they left to see if they could get another bottle from someone.

5

Drake lit a cigarette, puffed deep the sweet cancer and turned to Steph, who was also lighting up. The two of them made quite a pair: both punk to the very core, chains, black leather, makeup. They leaned against a brick wall in an alley in downtown Springwood. It was almost two in the morning now and only the worst drunks, the most dangerous psychopaths and denizens of the night were up.  
"He in there?" Drake asked.  
"Sure is," Steph said. "Couldn't stop looking at my ass."  
"Can't say I blame him."  
"You flatter."  
"It's true. He still have it?"  
"Of course. It's behind the counter. Sign says 'Not for sale'."  
"Yeah, we'll see. You ready?"  
"Ready when you are, babe."  
"Let's do it."  
They exited the alley, rounded the building to the entrance. A single, solitary door was illuminated on the street. The sign above it read, "Anderson's Pawn." Drake and Steph entered the shop.  
It was small, cramped. Every shelf, every space of counter was full of junk, both valuable and totally worthless. Coca-Cola pins sat next to handguns, old porcelain dolls shared space with switchblades. The man behind the counter, presumably Anderson, was around fifty, big, round but not what you'd call fat. His hair had mostly thinned out and he wore big, black spectacles and a gold necklace. The counter was not lined with bars or bullet-proof glass. This place was too low-budget to afford something like that.  
"Gal says you have some kind of great offer for me," Anderson said. "Something worth opening up at this time of night. What is it?"  
"I want that," Drake said.  
He pointed at the item, which was behind the counter, behind Anderson, on a little shelf of its own, dusty and untouched for some time. Anderson turned to see what Drake was pointing at.  
"Can't you read? What are they teaching you kids these days? That's not for sale," he said. "It's mine. Source of pride, shall we say. I'll never sell it, no matter what the price. That really what you wanted to see me about, son? You wasted your time then."  
"What if I make you an offer you can't refuse?" Drake said.  
"Don't make me laugh."  
But it was Drake - and Steph - who laughed. Steph covered her mouth in embarrassment.  
"What's so funny?" Anderson said.  
"Nothing," Drake said. "Look, I got a buyer for that...collector's piece. Willing to pay quite a price."  
"That somehow my problem?"  
"Oh, more than you know."  
He pulled the handgun lightning quick. One moment, his hands were empty, the next he was pointing the gun at the man. It was a revolver, nickel-plated, short-barreled.  
"Jesus Christ," Anderson said. "Think that's supposed to scare me? Think that's the first time someone's pointed a gun at me, son?"  
"Any of 'em pull the trigger?" Drake asked.  
"Not a one. And neither are you. I don't believe you will."  
"Oh?"  
"Yeah. Your generation doesn't have the guts. You don't know anything about honor...or proper violence. The kind's that called for."  
Drake cocked his head to one side, smirked. His piercings glittered in the harsh, flat light of the shop.  
"Proper, huh?" he said. "I don't know about that."  
He pulled the trigger twice, the first shot taking Anderson in the gut, the second in the head. His nose disappeared and the back of his head exploded out of his skull, splattering the wall behind him. Some blood and brain matter hit the item in question.  
"What the fuck?!" Steph said.  
Anderson's body dropped to the ground as Drake laughed. He walked slowly, calmly towards the counter.  
"I thought you were just going to scare him!" Steph said. "Not kill him!"  
Drake shrugged. He hopped the counter, gave the dead body a kick and grabbed the item off the shelf.  
"Hold this," he said.  
Steph took the item as Drake jumped back over the counter. They were out of the store in seconds. Their car was parked in the alley and they rushed back to it, got in and got going. Drake was driving, Steph in the passenger seat.  
"Someone's willing to pay three thousand bucks for this?" Steph said. "Why? What is it?"  
Drake shrugged again, looked at the item.  
"I don't know," he said. "It's pretty flash. I could see myself wearing it."  
The item was a glove.  
A glove augmented with metal; razor sharp claws on four of its fingers.


	2. Suburban Legend

1

The next morning - a Saturday - Jill woke up at nine, looked around, disoriented for a moment. She was in her living room, on the floor, in front of the television. She sat up, saw Gale on the couch, still passed out. They hadn't quite made it the night before: only managing to stay up till about five. With the first rays of dawn creeping in through the windows, they had passed out of the waking world and into the unconscious. Jill knew she had dreamed during her brief hours of sleep but couldn't remember what.  
"Well, you two look like you had fun last night," a voice said.  
Gale sat up, immediately awake. She rubbed sleep out of her eyes but dropped back down on her back on the couch, not asleep but not wanting to return to the waking world just yet. Jill turned, still sitting, to find her father standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He also wore the scars of a hard, mostly sleepless night: bags under his eyes, a weariness in his manner. Bill Snyder was in his later forties, hair thinning, starting to grey at the temples.  
"Pull another all-nighter at the paper?" Jill asked.  
"Yeah," he said.  
"What happened?"  
"There was...I don't think I should say."  
"We're gonna find out about it sometime, Dad. Might as well tell us."  
"There was a suicide last night. One of your classmates."  
"Jesus, who?"  
"Boy named Charlie Boyle. Lived just down the street. Did you know him?"  
"Only a little. How did he do it?"  
He sighed.  
"Come on, Dad," Jill said.  
"He used some kind of metal wire to hang himself," Bill said. "Took his head clean off."  
"Nice image, Dad."  
"Glad to be of service, hon. You missed breakfast. Cereal will suffice, I would imagine."  
"Yeah, sounds great."  
"I'm heading out."  
"Already?"  
"There's a million stories in the City, my dear. Someone's got to cover them."  
He took a final drink of his coffee and left through the front door. Jill sighed and leaned against the couch, her back to Gale.  
"Charlie Boyle," she said. "He ever strike you as suicidal?"  
"No," Gale said, yawning and turning on her side, eyes still closed. "But I didn't know him very well."  
"Neither did I."  
"We didn't make it."  
"What?"  
"We didn't make it last night. We fell asleep."  
"Yeah."  
"Did you dream?"  
"Yeah. Don't remember what, though. You?"  
"Yeah. The theater one again. Didn't make it as far this time, though. Less sleep than normal, I guess."  
"Well, that's good, isn't it?"  
"Yeah. What kind of cereal do you have?"  
"I'll go check."  
Wearily, she got up and headed into the kitchen. Gale sat up on the couch suddenly - inspiration striking - and called out to Jill:  
"If you have Fu-Man Chews, I'll take a bowl of that!"

2

Eric was drenched in sweat. It was a cool morning but the sun was hard today, and it beat down on the young man as he pushed the heavy, metal death machine forward, always forward. Forward and back and forth, back and forth. It was Hellish.  
"Son, son! How's it going there?"  
It was Mr. Blaze, sitting on the porch as he always did, watching Eric mow the retirment home's lawn. He did it every week, along with several other choice lawns around the neighborhood. All to earn extra money, so he could get out of this town. Of course, his mother always reminded him that it wasn't a real job and she was right, of course.  
"Good, Mr. Blaze," Eric called.  
"Watch..." Mr. Blaze said, "watch the corners, now, son. They...they bite."  
"Right, Mr. Blaze. I'll be careful."  
Eric continued moving the lawnmower up and down the lawn of the retirement home. It was hard work. The lawn was large, expansive, lush. He hadn't slept well the night before and he was being punished for that today, that was for sure.  
He looked out at the town revealed below him. The retirement home sat on a hill that rose above the neighborhood, practically above the whole town. Eric looked down at Elm Street. He could see his house, which was located at the bad end of the street; a shitty little building sitting next to a bunch of other shitty little buildings all connecting to a shady-looking back alley. Farther up the street, he could see the local spook house - the House - crumbling away. And, even farther up, Jill's house. Even farther still, the upscale end of Elm, with big, luscious homes. He didn't know anyone in those houses.  
His gaze drifted back towards his own end of the street, to a house near his own. He knew that Steph lived there, with that asshole Drake. He'd seen them coming in, going out, totally ignoring him. Being so close to her, yet so far: it was the worst.  
"Son!" Mr. Blaze said, stirring Eric from his musings.  
He had nearly driven off the edge of the property. He shook his head, chuckled.  
"Everything all right, son?!" Mr. Blaze said.  
"Yeah," Eric said. "Yeah, everything's fine, Mr. Blaze. Just want to get the fuck out of this backward ass town."  
"What was that, son?"  
"Nothing, Mr. Blaze. Lawn's looking great, don't you think?"  
"Yes, son, wonderful."  
Eric nodded, and got back to work. From then on he avoided looking down at the neighborhood.

3

Lunchtime at the Crave Inn. The place was lively, booming, the jukebox blaring that new Alice Cooper song about some serial killer in New Jersey. She and Bobby shared a small booth. Jill had a burger - as she usually did - while Bobby had a steak.  
"I don't know," Jill said between bites of her burger. "I don't know who he is. All I know is that I keep dreaming about him."  
"If you can't really remember him," Bobby said, "then how do you know that he's the same guy in every dream? Sounds like a pretty generic, faceless boogeyman. Pretty standard dream stuff if you ask me."  
"You haven't seen him. You don't know how scary he is."  
"Well, you don't remember him, so he can't be all that scary."  
"Oh, big tough football star, 'Nothing scares me!' Give me a break."  
Bobby laughed, took another few bites of steak. They ate silently for a few moments. Then, Bobby spoke again, this time not looking at Jill.  
"I've been having dreams - nightmares - recently," he said.  
"Oh yeah?" Jill said.  
"Sure."  
"What are they like?"  
"The usual stuff. Anxiety, not being able to perform."  
"Oh, really? Cause you seem to be doing a pretty good job of that, I must say."  
Bobby smiled, looked at her briefly, before turning his gaze back on his steak.  
"I mean on the field," he said. "Riley's always there, always...better than me. In the dreams, not in real life."  
"Of course," Jill said.  
"He's taunting me. And half the time I've forgotten to put on my clothes. I'm naked."  
"Do go on..."  
"And there's this...guy. He's standing behind Coach. No one else seems to notice him but me. I'm scared of him."  
"What does he look like?"  
"He's not tall. Kind of short, even. I can't quite... He's always in shadow, doesn't matter how bright it is outside. It's always hard to see him. But he's dressed funny."  
"Funny how? Like a clown or something?"  
"No, weird. He's kind of a tramp."  
"Like Charlie Chaplin?"  
Bobby laughed again.  
"No, like a street person. Wears this...dirty sweater. With--"  
"Red and green stripes," they both said in unison.  
Bobby looked up at Jill. Their eyes met. Silence. Neither of them made a move to eat, or grab their napkins, or call for the check. They just stared at each other. Then:  
"Wears a fedora," Jill said.  
"Yeah," Bobby said.  
"How can we be dreaming about the same guy?"  
"Come on. You're putting me on, right? Eric tell you about my dreams?"  
Jill shook her head.  
"That's the guy who's chasing me in my dreams," she said.  
"Bullshit," Bobby said.  
"No, not bullshit. I remember now. He has...razors for fingers. On one hand."  
"What the fuck?"  
"Bobby, how is this possible?"  
"It's a coincidence, babe, nothing more."  
"No, there's something to this. Something to do with Jesse."  
"Jesus Christ, babe, not everything is about you or Jesse. You gotta get over that."  
Jill shook her head, put her burger down and stood up, getting out of the booth. She grabbed a few dollars out of her purse.  
"Babe," Bobby said, "babe, you don't have to pay for--"  
"Quiet!" Jill said. "I'm paying for my meal, whether you like it or not. And when you realize that this - what's going on here, between us - that it's more than just coincidence, call me. Until then, I need some space."  
She slammed money down on the table and stormed out. Everyone in the place seemed to be looking at Bobby.  
"Problem?" he asked them.  
They went back to their meals and conversations and didn't say anything to him.  
"That's what I thought," Bobby said.

4

"He's a lightweight," Riley said. "Completely worthless."  
"Ask me," Ann said, "I think you obsess about him a bit."  
The two of them circled the High School field track, keeping pace. Riley felt he always had to beat Ann. One, because she was a girl and it would just be plain embarrassing if someone saw him losing to her. Two, he felt he had to beat everyone. Competition was life itself.  
But Ann wasn't making it easy as of late. She was one tough chick.  
"It isn't an obsession," Riley said. "Bobby just drags the whole team down. I mean you've seen us. You know that we've been sucking lately."  
Ann nodded slowly.  
"Yeah," she said, "you guys kinda suck."  
"I wasn't expecting an actual response from you," Riley said.  
"Then I'm not the person you should be asking. You know me."  
"Yeah, I know you. Know that you're gonna lose today. On the seventh lap, I'm taking you down. I'm gonna be a damn ghost."  
"Fat chance."  
"But, damn, but he does have a sexy girlfriend."  
"Bobby again?! You are obsessed."  
"Just an observation is all. That Jill is one sexy broad."  
"Yeah, I've noticed."  
"Oh, you have, have you? That's interesting. Any chance of getting a show? You know, a private viewing? You and Jill, some whipped cream, me as the only audience member?"  
"You're sick."  
"I could join in if that makes it any better."  
"You perv."  
"Jello, maybe? How 'bout Champagne? I could pour it down both of your chests."  
"Stop."  
Riley laughed, dramatically wiped sweat from his brow. Ann shot daggers at him with her eyes.  
"It would be sexy," Riley said, "all I'm saying."  
"Right," Ann said. "Hey, there's a band playing tonight."  
"Oh, not again."  
"What?"  
"I'm not going to another concert with you, girl."  
"Why not?"  
"Two reasons. One, you always take me to some loud, screeching metal band. You know I hate that shit. Two, you get all...weird when we're out doing the nightlife. Get some drinks in ya and you get all...clingy. It just feels odd, know what I mean?"  
"I guess," Ann sighed.  
"What?" Riley said. "What's wrong?"  
"Nothing. I've just been having these dreams."  
"Apocalypse Tomorrow?"  
"Yeah. It's worse. Whole world's reduced to ashes."  
"It's just a dream, girl, everyone has 'em."  
"But it's not a dream, Riley. We're gonna blow ourselves up. And there's nothing we can do about it. We're fucking toast."  
"It'll all blow over," Riley said. "They know what they're doing."  
"The politicians?" Ann said. "Are you out of your mind? One day we're wake up to a nuclear sunrise and we'll all be wiped off the face of the planet. How can that not scare you?!"  
"Oh, it scares me."  
"Oh, yeah?"  
"Sure. But I know something that'll scare you more."  
"Yeah? What?"  
"I'm about to beat your ass."  
"Bullshit."  
They both pushed themselves to run faster. They were neck and neck.

5

Maria Ramirez lived at 1419 Elm - across the street from the House - drove a sensible suburban, made scrumptious cookies and sold the best weed in Springwood. Jill walked all the way from the Crave Inn to Maria's house and, though it wasn't exactly hot out, the sun beat down on her and she worked up a bit of a sweat. To say that she pounded on Maria's door would be an exaggeration, but would also not be far off the mark. Maria answered as she always did, kind and inviting.  
She was an attractive latina, 27, rather tall with long hair and full lips. Many a boy on the street lusted after her, Jill knew.  
"Jill, come on in," Maria said. "Hot out? Lemonade?"  
"Sure," Jill said.  
They went inside. The house was a spacious two-stories, nicely decorated and furnished. Jill followed Maria into the kitchen. As she was getting Jill an ice cold glass of lemonade, Maria grabbed her pager off the kitchen counter, checked it.  
"I didn't get a page from you," she said.  
She handed Jill her glass. Jill took a long drink before answering.  
"Sorry," she said. "I didn't page. Didn't know I was coming."  
"It's fine," Maria said. "I've got another client or two coming by but they won't mind if you're here. So, what can I do for you?"  
"Dime, I think, would be good."  
"Coming up."  
Maria went through a little door off the kitchen. Jill could just see into this room, could see the bricks of sweet weed stacked several feet high, could see the safe tucked into a corner of the room. How much money was in that safe? Thousands? More?  
After a moment, Maria emerged from the little room, baggie in hand. Jill pulled money out of her purse, counted it out. Trying to be cool, trying to make this visit more than just needing to score drugs to get over the argument with her boyfriend, she searched for something to talk about. She looked around the house.  
"I like what you've done with the place," she said.  
"Thank you," Maria said. "Were you in this house before I moved in?"  
"No."  
"I got it cheap."  
"Oh, really?"  
"Yes. Murder house."  
"I think you've got that confused. That's across the street."  
"No, I'm not confused."  
"Well, 1428 Elm is across the street. That's the house with all the murders."  
"Of course, that house had many, many murders. No way they're going to sell that place again. But there was one murder in this house, too. Happened upstairs."  
"Really?"  
"Sure. Teenage boy. Ripped completely apart, they say. Turned into mush. He was the boyfriend of...oh, what was her name, the girl across the street, the one who went crazy."  
"Nancy," Jill said. "Her name was Nancy. I remember."  
"Nancy, right," Maria said. "Nancy Thompson. It was her boyfriend. He was just laying in bed when it happened. They say the room was painted with his blood."  
"Yeah, right, I remember. There was something about her boyfriend. This was the house? Wow. And she went nuts."  
Maria nodded.  
"Said something about some man from her dreams killing all her friends," she said. "Loco."  
"Man of her dreams," Jill said, staring off into space.  
This was when Jill noticed the bags under Maria's eyes. She was just about to comment on them when they were interrupted.  
"Maria, I thought I was the man of your dreams."  
It was Drake. He strode into the house like he owned the place. Steph was behind him, looking a little less confident than Jill had seen her before.  
Drake was just under six feet, with black hair, 19, attractive in a sleazy sort of way. He was adorned with many piercings and chains. Steph was dressed similar but her hair was the perfect shade of orange/red, and she was drop-dead gorgeous. Put in her a punk outfit - like she was now - or the attire of a runway model, it didn't matter, she'd be beautiful no matter what. But today she seemed meek, maybe a little paranoid.  
"Talking about the loser who died in this house?" Drake said. "He was a wimp, big time."  
"Did you know him?" Jill asked.  
Drake looked at her, sizing her up, giving her a bit of the stink eye. Finally, he answered, but by now he wasn't looking at her. He looked at Maria as he answered, as if she had asked the question.  
"Yeah," he said. "His girlfriend was a loser, too. Heard she never put out, either."  
"I told you not to come barging into my house," Maria said. "You knock, like any other decent person."  
"Do I look decent?"  
"No. Now what do you need?"  
"She cool?" Drake said, referring to Jill.  
"She's cool," Maria said. "So, what is it? Pills?"  
"No, I got a better source for pills. Free, in fact. So, no. Made a big score last night. Good payout. So I'm gonna take some smack."  
Maria nodded. Numbers and discussion of dollars were exchanged. Somehow, the whole exchange made Jill feel uncomfortable, made it all seem so real. She just bought weed from time to time, but this was a Real Drug, the kind where you could hear the capital letters when discussing them. For some reason, she expected the little packets to be filled with white powder but when Maria brought them out for Drake and Steph, the powder was brown. It looked like dirt, in fact. This was what they shot up into their arms? This stuff?  
Drake took his drugs, satisfied, and made to leave. Steph lingered behind, her gaze meeting Jill's. She looked as if she wanted to tell Jill something, wanted to get something off her chest. As it turned out, she didn't have the opportunity.  
"Steph!" Drake called out. "Let's go!"  
Steph finally left, following Drake out the door. Maria sighed after the two of them left, muttered something in Spanish under her breath.  
"Bad news," she said, louder. "Need anything else, Jill?"  
"No," Jill said, distracted. "Thanks."  
"Anytime."  
Jill left, headed home, thinking all the while about dreams and nightmares. Thinking about murders on Elm Street.  
About boogeymen.

6

Gale sat in her car, seat leaned as far back as it would go, her head practically in the back seat. It was almost two in the afternoon and this being a Saturday, naturally, she didn't have any plans. The car was parked outside her house but she dreaded going in. All that was waiting for her inside was her parents, who thought she was on every drug known to man. They would want to know where she was the previous night, who was she with and, more generally, what was going on with her. Gale certainly didn't have the answer to the last of these questions, though she was beginning to suspect it. What she was sure of was that she didn't want to go inside.  
But where to go? Jill was probably parked with Bobby somewhere for a little post-lunch fling. So that was out. And, though she got along with Eric, she wouldn't call them friends. In fact, her only real friend was Jill. Pathetic, really.  
The girl swept by just then, bobbing her head to music that Gale couldn't hear, gliding along on her skateboard. She was distinctive, odd. Short, just slightly chubby - thick was perhaps the right word - blonde hair with black streaks, crimped. Eyeliner and black highlights. Her clothes were predominately grey and black, with some white mixed in. Doc Martin boots, pants tucked inside. She wore headphones. All of a sudden, Gale felt compelled to stop the girl.  
"Hey!" she said.  
The girl stopped, kicked up her skateboard, caught it, eyed Gale with more than a little contempt, sour look plastered on her face. She didn't speak but gave Gale a "Yeah, what is it?" look.  
"What are you listening to?" Gale asked.  
The girl - who was perhaps a year younger than Gale - took off her headphones, the expression on her face changing, becoming if not congenial than at least neutral.  
"You really want to know?" the girl asked.  
"Yeah," Gale said.  
"Band called 'Psuedo Echo'."  
"Sounds pretty cool."  
"They are."  
"Hey, I know you, right? Is it...Tiffany?"  
"Yeah."  
"I'm Gale."  
"I know who you are."  
"Can I listen to some of it?"  
"Huh?"  
"The music."  
"Oh, I guess."  
Tiffany leaned over the car, took the headphones from around her neck and gave them to Gale, who slipped them over her ears. Their heads were quite close together as Gale listened to the song, "His Eyes." Their own eyes met during the course of the song and their gaze held strong.  
When the song ended, Gale reluctantly took off the headphones and gave them back to Tiffany. A comfortable silence passed between them.  
"That was good," Gale finally said.  
"Yeah, they're wicked," Tiffany said.  
"You're a Junior, aren't you?"  
Tiffany nodded.  
"Thought about where you want to go for college?" Gale asked, knowing she was grasping at straws but wanting to keep the conversation going.  
"No," Tiffany said, "not really. Doesn't seem to be much point."  
"What do you mean?"  
"I mean teenagers on Elm Street don't exactly have a long lifespan around here."  
"You heard about Charlie Boyle then."  
"What?"  
"Charlie Boyle. He killed himself last night."  
"Charlie's dead?"  
"You hadn't heard?"  
"No."  
"Then what are you talking about?"  
"Louis Abernathy, a month ago. Slit his wrists."  
"I haven't heard about him."  
"Then there was Jesse Walsh almost single-handedly taking out his entire class. Figure I won't make it to senior year."  
"Good attitude to have."  
"I'm just a realist."  
"Is it this town?"  
"Huh?"  
"All the kids dying or killing themselves. Is it the town's fault?"  
"It's this street, like I said. Goes back a ways, actually."  
"Oh yeah?" Gale asked.  
"Yeah," Tiffany said. "Back in the late 60s or early 70s, there was this serial killer. Killed kids, little kids. This street was his hunting ground. Snatched twenty or thirty of the little buggers."  
"What did he do to them?"  
"Tortured them. Mutilated them. Murdered them."  
"Sounds like a nice guy."  
"The nicest."  
"You live nearby?"  
"Just down the street. That's why I'm doomed. Speaking of which, I should get home to my dad. It was...nice talking to you."  
She stood up, turned to go. Gale watched her leave, her gaze drifting to the girl's wide hips and prominent ass.  
"Hey," she called after the girl.  
Tiffany stopped, turned around again. Gale smiled at her.  
"You wanna grab a late lunch?" Gale asked. "I've haven't had one yet."  
"Sounds good," Tiffany said.  
"Yeah. And, hey, Giant Human Sandwich is playing at the Forum tonight."  
"Wicked."  
"You know it. Seen 'em before?"  
"No."  
"They rock live."  
"Shit."  
"What?"  
"What about my dad?" Tiffany said.  
"Fuck your dad," Gale said.  
Tiffany nodded.  
"Okay," she said.  
"Excellent," Gale said.  
Tiffany rushed back to the car and got in the passenger side. Gale started up the car and gunned it the second the girl had her seatbelt on.

7

Stanley's house was like a fortress. Bars on all the windows, doors hard, sturdy wood with locks that had to be unlocked on both sides. Stanley was out till nearly ten, a somewhat early night for a Saturday yet he had to explain to his worried parents that he had been out with Bobby, trying to console him after his fight with Jill. It took several minutes and there was a new tape burning a hole in his backpack all the while.  
Finally, blissful release! He was allowed to retreat to his room, where everything made sense. It was a large room - he was an only child and his parents did pamper him - with a large, comfortable bed and a window which was always covered to keep out the sun on the rare mornings that he could sleep in. This morning was not one of those mornings. There were chores to do and errands to run and he was up at seven. He was feeling it now - chores in the morning, errands in the afternoon and all evening trying to cheer up his best friend. He was beat. But, he had to beat something else before he could fall into beautiful sleep.  
The room was lined with VHS tapes, they were everywhere - on shelves, stacked on the ground, in the closet, which is where he kept his "special" ones. Porno that he didn't want his parents knowing about. The first thing he did when he bought a new one was throw away the cover. This made him feel awful, he just loved the pictures and the artwork, but it was necessary. If his mother saw a row of caseless tapes, she would just assume that they were filled with programs that Stanley had taped off the television and think nothing else of them. This was what he hoped, anyway.  
He got the new tape out of his backpack, jumped for joy a little bit. A brand new one: "Slippery When Wet" with the luscious Erica Boyer and hot to trot newcomer Barbara Dare. The pictures he had seen of her were great and he heard that she was even better in action.  
Making double sure the door was locked, he undressed, turned on the television and booted up the VCR. He slipped the tape inside the machine and sat in front of the television on the floor, quite close to the screen. After the usual FBI Warning, the program started.  
"What the Hell?" Stanley said.  
This couldn't be the right tape. The video showed a typical small town America street. In fact, it looked like his street, like Elm Street. That couldn't be right.  
A roll of static scrolled up the screen as the camera panned. There was an abrupt cut and the new image was different somehow. Suddenly, it came to Stanley. It looked like film now, not video, not like a cheap porno movie but like a theatrical film, one from the sixties or early seventies, possibly. It was still the street from before - still Elm Street, his mind insisted - but now the camera was focused on a house. It looked familiar to Stanley but he couldn't quite place it. An ice cream truck was parked in front of the house. It was weird, somehow all angles and graffiti: an abstraction of an ice cream truck, then, not the real thing. No one was behind the wheel. In fact, there was no movement at all in the shot, as if he were looking at a still image instead of a shot from a film. There were no leaves blowing in the wind, no animals moving around.  
All of a sudden, however, there was movement. A figure moved in the cab of the ice cream truck, as if emerging from the back. The figure was in shadow, Stanley couldn't quite make him out.  
There was another abrupt cut and the television now showed the interior of a vast, labyrinthine boiler room. It looked like some kind of industrial plant on the outskirts of town. The camera panned the plant until coming to focus on a long, womb-like corridor. At the end of the corridor was a figure, a figure with a distinctive silhouette: a hat on his head, one hand outstretched with long fingers. Razors? The figure was too far off to tell for sure but they were claws of some kind.  
There was a long, discordant groan on the soundtrack - moody music or oppresive sound design, take your pick - and static broke up the image until there was nothing on the television but white snow and noise.  
Stanley started to get very, very scared.  
All of a sudden, the image put itself back together, as tapes sometimes do. But the image had changed again. Now Stanley was looking at someone from behind, someone sitting in front of their television set, someone naked and sitting cross-legged on the floor. Stanley leaned closer to the television and the figure onscreen did the same thing.  
He was looking at himself.  
Right now.  
Live.  
Stanley stood up, turned around as fast as he could. His room was empty. The television went all snow again, white noise filling the speakers. Was that voices he could hear under the white noise? Voices calling for help?  
It didn't matter. He had his own problems to deal with. His closet door was open and he knew it hadn't been just a few moments ago. But this was not what worried him most. No, what did was the fact that all the tapes that he kept in there were moving.  
They moved erratically, jittery, skittering off the shelf, crawling down it and landing on the floor. Like bugs. The first one scampered across the floor towards him and Stanley was reminded of a cockroach running madly across a room.  
More followed. Suddenly, he was surrounded by a virtual swarm of VHS/roaches, all of them running like chickens with their heads cut off. It was repulsive, scary.  
Stanley stepped on one and instantly regretted it. Pain shot up his leg from his foot. Fragments of hard, sharp plastic cut into the sole of his foot.  
The VHS/roaches reacted, all at once, surging towards him and overwhelming him. They crawled up his legs, his torso, the crack of his naked ass. What the Hell were they using for legs?!  
Stanley fell to the ground, reached out, trying to grab onto something. His hand found the VCR below the television, his figures sticking into the slot itself.  
There was light coming from inside the VCR. As the VHS/roaches crawled up his body, reaching his neck and going for his mouth, Stanley pushed the flap of the VCR slot open more. He had to see. Just had to!  
From inside the slot, a pair of eyes watched him. The skin around the eyes was horribly burned. The eyes themselves were filled with hatred. They wanted him dead.  
And they would be satisfied soon enough.  
The VHS/roaches covered his whole head now and he could no longer see. Soon he would suffocate or perhaps be torn apart by these hideous creatures - hideous, expensive creatures, he thought madly, must have paid at least ten or twenty bucks each for these killers - leaving him nothing but a bloody husk.  
What would his mother find in the morning? What would she think happened?  
Stanley started to black out. It wouldn't be long now. His body convulsed, limbs flailing all over the place.  
"Stanley," his mother said.  
Stanley sat up, looked around. And there was nothing. No VHS/roaches, no crazy images on the television. The only thing onscreen was the porno: Barbara Dare was pleasuring Erica Boyer in the backseat of a car, with cool sexuality.  
It had all been a dream. He must have fallen asleep right after putting the tape in.  
"Stanley, everything all right?" his mother asked, knocking on his door.  
"Fine, mom," he called.  
"Okay, dear. Just saying goodnight."  
"Yeah, goodnight, mom."  
"Come say goodnight to me properly now."  
"I'm already in bed, mom. See you tomorrow."  
"Of course, dear."  
He heard her leave his door and head down the hall to her own room. He fell onto his back, looked up at his ceiling. His foot still hurt and he checked his sole and, sure enough, blood. His foot had been cut by those things. As if they were real, even though they couldn't possibly be.  
It didn't look like he was getting any sleep tonight.


	3. His Name Was Freddy

1

It was a bright, sunny Sunday morning and, though Bobby was surrounded by a veritable army of others in church, he felt incredibly alone. He didn't get any sleep the night before, only occasionally dozing before forcing himself awake. He didn't want to dream anymore, didn't want to see that shadowy figure standing behind Coach, seeming to control him. In the very witching hour of night, what Jill had suggested - that they were dreaming of the same creep - didn't seem so absurd, seemed logical, in fact. Why had he dismissed it so yesterday?  
He tried to concentrate on what the pastor was saying from the pulpit. He was a good man and was not part of the fire-and-brimstone brigade that had become so common as of late.  
"But the Lord forgives," the pastor said. "Let's not forget that. Let's keep it forefront in our minds, in our hearts. Forgiveness is the very lifeblood of the body of Christ. It runs through every vein in His body." He paused for effect. "And it runs through every one of our veins, as well...if we let it."  
He paused again, took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose. He put them back on.  
"Every one of us, that is, except one," he continued. "Bobby Garfield sits with us here today but he is not one of us. He is a snake in the Garden."  
Bobby, alarmed, looked around. Everyone was staring at him.  
"That's right," the pastor continued, "look at him. Judge him. Mark him for what he really is: an absolute, unforgiving, filthy piece of fucking dog shit. Can I get an amen?"  
"Amen!" everyone in the church except for Bobby said.  
"I said, 'Can I get an amen?'," the pastor repeated.  
"Amen!" they all repeated.  
Bobby looked around again, saw nothing but daggers from everyone else's gaze. He returned his own gaze to the pastor, but the man had changed. His face and hands were horribly burned.  
"This fucking whore right here," he said, "will not forgive a fellow teammate for being black. Can you believe that? Won't forgive Riley Reynolds for simply being better than he is. In everything! Football, studies, pussy-chasing, what have you."  
"Amen!" an elderly woman near Bobby said.  
"That's right, sister," the pastor said. "Sing it! This boy knows that he's merely second-best but can't admit it to himself, let alone anyone else!"  
The pastor got down from his pulpit, walked the short flight of steps down into the audience. He approached Bobby, who felt himself sinking back into his pew.  
"He's a fake!" the pastor said.  
He pointed a clawed finger at Bobby as he came closer.  
"A charlatan!"  
He reached Bobby and grabbed hold of him by the collar, using his non-gloved hand. He flashed his razor claws at him with the other.  
"And I say we all band together and rip him limb from limb."  
Bobby screamed.  
And woke himself up. Now, everyone really was looking at him. Even the pastor, who was still up on his pulpit, normal-looking once again. It had been a dream but, boy, did it seem real.  
"Everything okay, son?" the pastor asked.  
Bobby stood up, shaking his head. His mother and father looked up at him like he was insane. And perhaps he was. How would he know?  
"I..." he said.  
"Sit down, dear," his mother said.  
"I..."  
"Sit your ass down, son," his father said.  
"I can't do this anymore," Bobby said.  
He strode out of his pew, walked down the aisle and left the building. He sat on the stairs outside the building, wishing he had a cigarette. He had quit a year ago to really try and concentrate on training, trying to be better at the sport he had chosen. He looked up at the church, which towered over him like some building out of a German Expressionist horror film.  
To his surprise, it wasn't his parents who came out to check on him. It wasn't the pastor, nor Coach. It was Riley.  
He came out of the church cautiously, sat down next to Bobby even more cautiously. He looked around, as if he wanted to make sure no one was watching them. Satisfied, he looked at Bobby.  
"Look," he said, "just cause I don't like you, doesn't mean I want to see any harm come to you. Do I think you can do better out there on the field? Yes. Do I think that gorgeous girl of yours would find herself much happier in my arms? Hell, yes. But she ain't mine. And you're on the team, even if I don't want you there. Which means, I and everyone else on that team need you at one hundred percent. Not fifty percent. Fuck, not even at ninety-nine percent. Understand?"  
Bobby nodded.  
"Okay," Riley said. "Now, what is it? Drugs? PCP, what?"  
Bobby shook his head.  
"No, man," he said. "I don't touch that shit."  
"Then what is it?" Riley demanded.  
"I just... I can't sleep."  
Riley looked at him, confused.  
"I keep having these dreams," Bobby said. "There's this guy standing behind Coach. Wears this dirty red and green sweater, hat and has these claws."  
Riley stood up all of a sudden. He pointed an accusing finger at Bobby.  
"Look," he said, "I don't know what Eric told you about me or my dreams but I made it clear that was private! Hear? This is not fucking funny."  
"Wait, you--" Bobby said.  
"Shut up, man. All I know is that you better be tip-top out there tomorrow morning at practice. Anything else, I'll come at you like a brick fucking wall."  
He stormed off, going back into the church, leaving Bobby alone on the steps. Bobby, beginning to put the pieces together, sat for a moment longer. Then he got up and ran off, looking for a pay phone. Jill never went to church. And he had to speak to her.  
Right now.

2

"Whoa," Jill said, holding the phone next to her head like it was the only thing keeping her up. "Slow down. Now, what are you talking about?"  
"Riley!" Bobby said on the other end of the line.  
"Riley?" Jill asked.  
She hadn't had any sleep the night before and was just laying in her bed when Bobby called. Her mind wasn't processing things the way it used to, it seemed.  
"Yes, Riley," Bobby said. "He's dreaming about the same guy that you and I are."  
"So you believe me now," Jill said.  
"Yes! Yes, okay, I do. This guy's real!"  
"So, I tell you the exact same thing and you write me off like a flighty bitch but Riley says it and suddenly it all makes sense to you? What the fuck?"  
"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'm really sorry. I was an asshole. But listen to me now: I believe you."  
"Okay, that's a start."  
"So?"  
"So what?"  
"So what do we do now?" Bobby asked.  
"We need to find out if anyone else is dreaming about him," Jill said.  
"Right. What do you need from me?"  
"Talk to your friends, find out who's not sleeping and why."  
"How am I gonna make that sound natural?"  
"I don't know, you were in a couple school plays, act."  
"I was a terrible actor. They just wanted me for my looks."  
"I know, why do you think I'm with you?"  
"Funny."  
"I try."  
"Okay," Bobby said. "Fine, I'll do what I can. What are you gonna do?"  
"What I do best," Jill said.  
"What's that?"  
"Go to the library and read."  
"Sure. Sounds like you." Voice dripping with sarcasm.  
"Doesn't it?"  
"I still prefer your job over mine."  
"Pick me up from the library around...say, two?"  
"Okay."  
"Oh, and Bobby?"  
"Yeah?"  
"I love you."  
He was silent and Jill got a little nervous. More than a little, a lot. Then:  
"I love you, too," he said.  
"Bye," Jill said.  
"Goodbye."  
The line went dead. Jill ran into the bathroom - throwing her clothes off as she did - to take a quick shower before rushing to grab a bus to the library.

3

Gale's bedroom was plastered with posters, mostly music, a few movies. Joan Jett shared space with the Alan Parsons Project, Iron Maiden's Eddie looked over Barbara Steel, Alice Cooper butted up against Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kiss made room for Vincent Price. Clothes were strewn all over the place. Gale herself sat in a corner of the room, knees up to her nose, arms crossed over her legs. The previous night had been Hell: extended periods of watching shitty, late night TV broken up by bouts of unwanted sleep filled with increasingly terrifying dreams. It was now the middle of the day, a little before noon and she had done nothing today but stay in her room, trying not to sleep.  
Finally, she decided to get up and head downstairs. Exiting her room, she walked onto the landing and started down the stairs. She could see her parents in the dining room, preparing lunch.  
"Hi, honey," her mother said as she emerged onto the ground floor.  
"Hello, dear," her father said.  
"Hi," Gale said.  
"Going to win that scholarship to a top Ivy League school like we've both been hoping?" her mother said.  
"What?"  
"A football scholarship, perhaps?" her father said.  
"Have both of you lost your minds?"  
"Well, that's what boys do, don't they?" Mom said. "They make their parents proud."  
"They do manly things!" Dad said.  
She just noticed that they were dressed like 50s TV parents, like "Leave It To Beaver" or something. Her father was smoking a pipe and wore a sweater vest. He puffed on the pipe and smiled.  
"I'm not a boy," Gale said.  
"Sure you are, sport!" Dad said. "Did you not get enough sleep last night? Run too many laps in Phys Ed?"  
"How's Tiffany, dear?" Mom said. "Oh, she is such a doll! You are one lucky young man."  
"How do you know about Tiffany? You haven't met her."  
"Of course we have, dear. You brought her by before you two went to the Sock Hop last year."  
"And Homecoming," Dad said, gesturing with his pipe.  
"Oh, yes, Homecoming! You said you two had such a good time! That is nice."  
"I'm losing my mind," Gale said and rubbed her eyes.  
"Did you forget something, dear?" Mom asked.  
"What are you talking about?"  
Then she looked down and saw that she was wearing nothing but a tank top and men's underwear, again like something out of a sitcom. That was when she heard the laugh track, just like in a 50s TV sitcom. She covered her breasts - quite visible through the thin white cotton - and the audience laughed louder.  
"Hey, sport," Dad said. "Could you head downstairs and check the furnace for me? You know how my back is these days."  
He turned and rubbed his back so that she - and, presumably, the audience - could see. A large knife was stuck in the base of his spine.  
"Oh, I see the problem, dear," Mom said.  
She grabbed hold of the knife and pulled it out. Blood sprayed like a fountain from his wound, covering the table, Mom, the floor and the walls. Mom and Dad didn't seem to notice.  
"Oh, this has your name on it, dear," Mom said, looking at the knife.  
She turned the knife so that Gale could see it. On the handle, scratched into the wood was a name: Gale.  
"Oh, my back doesn't feel well, either," Mom said, gently putting the knife on the dining room table.  
She turned and there was a knife sticking out of her back, as well. Dad saw it and his eyes lit up.  
"Let me get that, honey," he said.  
He grabbed it and pulled it out. But he pulled it upwards first, tearing open her whole back in the process. Her ribs snapped open, spine ripped apart, lungs sliced wide. Blood and viscera pumped out of her, covering Dad entirely. Mom fell over backwards, her destroyed back hitting a chair at the dining room table with a horrible crack. The smile never left her face.  
The studio audience was losing it by this point. Gale was terrified.  
Dad took another puff of his pipe as he calmly started stabbing Mom repeatedly in the face with the knife, slicing off her skin and breaking every bone in her head. He nodded cheerily to Gale.  
"Better get to work on that furnace, sport," he said.  
The studio audience surged to a crescendo of laughter and then the lights dimmed, signalling a commercial break. When they came back up, Dad was on the ground next to Mom, quite dead.  
Gale felt she had no choice but to continue with this mad play so she headed towards the door off the kitchen that led to the basement. She opened it, peered down the dark staircase.  
Red light came from somewhere down there and steam rose up the staircase. And she could hear laughter down there.  
"No," she said. "No, I deny it. I deny it! You hear me?!"  
"Gale," a voice called from down there. "Gale, are you a girl or a boy? Or are you both?!"  
Wicked, evil laughter.  
"Fuck you!" Gale said. "I said I deny it!"  
All of a sudden, the red light disappeared and the steam dissipated. A moment later, water began to fill the basement and reached about a quarter of the way up the stairs. The water sloshed and rose up and down, back and forth. Slowly, someone emerged from the water. A lovely young woman with dark hair, with one shocking streak of grey running through it like lightning. She was naked. Gale had never seen her before but here, dripping wet, she was so inviting, so alive.  
Cautiously, she walked down the stairs. The girl's arms were held out to her, beckoning her closer. Gale reached the water and it felt like Heaven. She embraced the woman, kissed her and they slowly descended into the water.  
The two of them danced deep under water and Gale realized that they were no longer confined to the cramped space of the basement stairs but were in a large pool, a natural one, somewhere out in the wild. The two girls danced, kissed, touched, turned upside down and right side up again.  
The dark-haired woman took Gale in an embrace once again and they held each other tight. Then the woman whispered into Gale's ear:  
"His name was Freddy," she said. "Tell Jill."  
And Gale woke up, still in her room, surrounded by strewn clothes. She looked around, disoriented.  
"What the Hell was that?" she said.

4

Ann sat on the curb, reading Teen Beat, trying to avoid the looks of anyone who happened to be passing by. The curb in question was outside a Check Cashing place, an unsavory little building downtown. She looked up from the article on Johnny Depp she had been reading and shot a glance over her shoulder, into the building. Inside, her father was arguing with the employee behind the desk. She couldn't hear them but it didn't matter. It was always the same thing: he was trying to cash a bad check and the clerk was having none of it. It was so embarrassing.  
She was about to return to her magazine when she saw someone else leaning against the building, someone she knew. Steph Harwood nursed a cigarette and shot paranoid glances around. She was looking for someone.  
"Steph?" Ann said.  
Steph whipped her head around, eyes full of fear. Ann had never seen the young woman like this. She was usually so confident, so sure of herself.  
"Hi," Steph finally said.  
"Haven't seen you in a while," Ann said. "What's going on?"  
"Nothing. No, nothing. Haven't been doing anything."  
"Are you okay?"  
"I'm fine."  
She finished her cigarette, pitched it away, produced another. Her hands were shaking as she tried to light it. Her cigarette lighter didn't seem to be working.  
"Shit," she said. "Must be out. Do you have a light?"  
"Sorry," Ann said.  
"Damn." She looked disgusted, defeated, tired, paranoid, all at the same time. "Do you think everything, our lives and stuff...do you think we can change any of that? Or do you think it's all set up for us? Like destiny or something. What I mean is...can we change anything?"  
"I...I don't know. What got you thinking like this, Steph?"  
Steph shook her head, looked away. The next building over was a bar that Ann knew was frequented by airline stewardesses and pilots. Her father would sometimes try to pick up a stewardess or two there and always either be kicked out or come home alone. A particularly attractive dark-haired stewardess wearing a maroon outfit - Sue, her name-tag read - walked out of the bar, more than a little tipsy. She would have been from Ashe Airlines, the only major airline in the small airport in town.  
"What happened to you?" Ann said.  
She got up, folded her magazine and tucked it under her arm, approached Steph. Cautiously, she extended a hand and put it on Steph's shoulder. The other woman wiped away a tear, then changed, her vulnerability gone, replaced by a harshness, an anger.  
"No," she said, "what happened to you? We were best friends when we were in theater together, remember? You were a Freshman and I was a Sophomore. Then you found Track, and I didn't see you around anymore. You're the one that something happened to, not me!"  
"What's your problem?" Ann said.  
"I don't have a problem."  
"I'm just trying to help you."  
"I just haven't been sleeping lately, that's all."  
"Me, neither. Now what's wrong?"  
"I...I can't..."  
"Babe!"  
Both girls turned to regard Drake, who sauntered around the corner, a six-pack in hand. He looked at the two of them, smiled.  
"Wow, babe," he said, "trying to hook me up with a threeway? You shouldn't have."  
"Let's go," Steph said, sighed.  
"Steph," Ann said.  
"Fuck off," Steph said.  
Drake laughed and he and Steph left, heading for their car. Ann watched them go, confused, upset. After a moment, her father finally left the Check Cashing place and they left, heading home.

5

Jill wasn't getting very far at the library. She looked up things, cross-referenced indexes, scoured the card catalog, fished through the microfilm but just couldn't find anything more than references to hideous, mysterious crimes on Elm Street. It was almost as if something were working against her, fighting her. Perhaps it was the town itself, wanting to hide its unsavory past.  
Currently, she was sitting on one of the long, sturdy wooden tables in the rough center of the library. There was no one else around. She kept nodding off while reading. The words all started to blend together. She found her mind wandering, drifting to some place hidden, some place dangerous.  
A little girl, dressed all in white, ran by Jill and disappeared into the stacks. Jill got up. She felt like she had to follow the girl.  
At first, she couldn't find her. All the rows looked the same and seemed to stretch on forever. Finally, she found the little girl jumping rope with two other girls, also dressed in white. They sang a jump-rope song - one that was oddly familiar to Jill - but she had found them in the middle of the song:  
"Five, six, grab your crucifix,  
Seven, eight, better stay up late,  
Nine, ten, never sleep again."  
Why was that familiar? Had she sung it when she was a little girl? That would make sense. But it seemed so long ago now.  
"Girls?" Jill said.  
Two of the girls scattered, leaving only the one who Jill had seen earlier. Jill approached her but the little girl stopped her, one hand outstretched.  
"What?" Jill asked.  
"Quiet," the little girl said.  
"Why?"  
"Because he can hear us."  
"Who?"  
"Him."  
She pointed down a connecting hallway of books. Jill looked down it and saw a figure standing at the end of the hallway. There he was, the boogeyman. He was still in shadow, still hard to see, but he was here, this close to her.  
He laughed that evil, sadistic laugh. Jill turned to the little girl - wanting to save her - but it was too late. The little girl's stomach was already torn open, her guts spilling out onto the floor in front of her.  
"Go!" the little girl said.  
Jill turned and ran.  
It was impossible. All the stacks looked the same, they all stretched out into infinity. Some of them led to other places: a vast boiler room, a room filled nasty, hanging chains, a pool of glittering water, a sun-baked desert crawling with scorpions, a basement stacked high with rotting bodies, what looked like an East Coast summer camp, a thousand-foot drop. All nightmares, all accessible from this maze.  
The boogeyman was close, she could hear him nearby, could feel him hot on her heels. She turned a corner and it was as though luck was on her side: she saw herself, asleep at one of the tables in the library. She pushed herself to go faster.  
She felt a sharp pain at her back just as she reached herself. At the table, she jolted awake. The pain in her back was still there. She looked down and turned a little, saw one shallow but long cut in her shirt. Blood dripped from it.  
Digging in her purse, she found some Kleenex and gingerly applied it to the wound. So, she could be hurt in the dream. Great. That meant that she could be killed in the dream, any of them could.  
All of a sudden, she realized that someone was standing over her. For a moment, she was alarmed but when she looked up she saw it was Gale.  
"How the Hell did you know I was here?" Jill asked.  
"I don't know," Gale said. "It just felt right. Are you okay? How did you hurt yourself?"  
"In the dream."  
"Shit. That can happen?"  
"Apparently."  
"This is gonna sound weird..."  
"Shoot."  
"I have a message for you."  
"Yeah?"  
"His name was Freddy. Mean anything?"  
It all came back to Jill. The whole jump-rope song.  
"One, two, Freddy's coming for you," she said.  
"What?" Gale said, still standing over her.  
"That old jump-rope song we used to sing."  
"So what?"  
"Don't you get it? It was based on something. An urban legend, a boogeyman! But it was based on something real! Freddy. Now we have a name, a first name, at least. That's gonna make it easier to find some info. How did you know that I needed help?"  
"You wouldn't believe me. I can help you out here, though."  
"Okay."  
"But we're gonna need these."  
Dramatically, Gale slammed down a bottle of pills on the table. "STAY AWAKE!" the bottle read.  
"Stole 'em from my parents," she said.  
"You've been waiting to do that, haven't you?" Jill said. "Slam those down on the table?"  
"Yeah, I thought it'd be cool."  
"Oh, it was. But we're going to need a lot more of those."  
"I know. We'll pick some up after we leave here."  
"Then let's get to work. Bobby will be by around two."  
"Let's go."  
They got to work.

6

They decided to all meet at the drive-in movie theater on the edge of town. They took two vehicles: Gale's convertible and Bobby's truck. The drive-in wasn't very busy on a Sunday night and few cars were parked at this particular screen. It was dark and the first feature - Critters - had already started. They parked the vehicles close together so they could sit both in the bed of the truck, tailgate open, and inside Gale's car, top down. Their intention was to talk, not to watch the movies but they wanted a public place, some place where they could just drive away if something were to happen unexpectedly.  
They numbered five: Jill, Bobby, Gale, Eric and Stanley. Bobby had tried to convince Riley to come but he wasn't having any of it.  
Jill, Eric and Bobby sat in the bed of the truck, while Gale and Stanley sat in Gale's car just below them. Jill led the discussion.  
"His name was -- is Freddy Krueger," she said.  
She slammed down xeroxed copies of newspaper clippings and pages from true crime books and magazines. A collection of documents held together by a paperclip.  
"He was a child killer," Gale said.  
"I think I've heard of him," Eric said.  
"You should," Jill said. "Elm Street - our street - was his hunting ground. I know that I thought he was an urban legend, a boogeyman made up to scare little boys and girls into obeying their parents."  
"Yeah," Stanley said, "Behave or Freddy will get you in your sleep."  
"That's fucked up," Eric said.  
"No shit," Bobby said. "Especially since he can get us in our dreams."  
"What?" Eric said. "Come on."  
"Eric," Jill said, "we've all established that we've dreamed about the same guy."  
"Okay, well some psychic connection between all of us? Fine, I can buy that. But we can get hurt in our dreams - killed, even? No way. That's bullshit."  
Jill turned and lifted up her shirt. Eric put up both of his hands.  
"Look," he said, "Jill, I like you and all, but you don't have to show me some skin or--"  
He saw the cut in her back. He shut up.  
"Me, too," Stanley said.  
He took off his shoe and showed the rest of them his foot. Everyone got a good look.  
"Fuck," Eric said. "No way. How is this possible? Could you have just forgotten what really happened to you?"  
"There was nothing that could have cut me like that," Jill said. "Especially not sitting down at a table in the library."  
"Yeah," Stanley said. "And none of my tapes were broken. That only happened in the dream."  
"This is nuts," Eric said.  
"It's true," Gale said. "Look at this."  
She stood up in her car, leaned into the bed of the truck, shuffled through the documents and found a newspaper clipping. She handed it to him.  
"Nancy Thompson," she said. "She claimed that some kind of dream demon was killing her friends."  
"And she went to a nuthouse," Eric said. "So what?"  
"She wasn't there long," Gale said. "She got out, went to college. Just graduated. Major: psychology."  
Eric shook his head while Gale sat back down in her car. Jill, frustrated, grabbed hold of Eric's hand.  
"You remember Jesse Walsh, don't you Eric?" she said.  
"Course," Eric said.  
"He said almost the same thing. AND HE LIVED IN NANCY'S HOUSE! How much more proof do you need?!"  
"Okay, say I believe you. Say I just go with it. What can we do about it? Huh? What?"  
There was a moment of silence. Jill looked spent.  
"See?" Eric said. "We got nothing."  
"But we have to try," Stanley said. "Like you said, Nancy survived. She overcame him. So it can be done."  
"But we don't know how she did it," Eric said.  
"Has anyone tried to talk to Nancy herself?" Bobby said.  
"I have," Gale said. "Can't get to her. I know what school she went to. It's out of state. But it's not like they just give out numbers. And I checked phone books. Her number's not listed."  
"And I tried to get a hold of her dad," Jill said. "He used to be a lieutenant in the police department. Now he's a drunk who only occasionally shows up for work as a security guard. He won't talk to anyone. Just hangs up the phone."  
"What a prick," Eric said.  
"You're not kidding," Jill said.  
A strong, fit girl went running by. She was doing laps around the drive-in theater. Jill recognized her. She was a Sophomore, rising up through the ranks in track. What was her name? Chris? Was it Chris Gordon?  
Jill looked at Gale, saw that she was watching Chris run by with wistful eyes. Gale caught her look. Jill raised her eyebrows. Her unspoken question was obvious to Gale:  
"Was that this 'Chris' you were talking about?!"  
Gale shrugged and Jill's jaw dropped. She recovered a moment later and shot her best friend a "We'll talk about this later" look. Stanley caught everything but the rest of them didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.  
"We're missing something," Jill said. "Some piece of information that eludes us."  
"Something strange happened in my last dream," Gale said.  
"What?" Eric asked.  
"I was able to...push him away. Get rid of his world somehow. I changed it into something else."  
"What did you change it into?" Jill said.  
"Water. A pool or something. I don't know. Don't know if I can do it again."  
"Well, that's great," Eric said. "Some water. Fantastic."  
"It's a Hell of a lot more than any of us have been able to do," Jill said. "Fuck, I can almost always change my dreams but not these ones. It's like I'm trapped. Eric, I know you can change your dreams. So, how 'bout it? Have you been able to do anything? Change something?"  
"No," Eric said after a moment.  
"Then maybe Gale has something that we don't. I don't know what it is, if we can use it, but I do know that it's something, at least."  
They were silent again. They had come to a lull in the conversation, all of them too tired to delve further into the information that they had collected. Some of them watched the movie for a little bit, got some laughs. Jill stared at Gale, confused and slightly threatened by the silent revelation that had just occured a few minutes ago. Gale herself mainly ignored Jill's looks. She kept glancing over her shoulder at the fence around the drive-in. A few minutes later, Jill knew why.  
"Here she comes," Gale said.  
She got out of her car and ran over to the fence. On the other side of it, a girl came rolling towards the theater. She was on a skateboard. When she got to the fence, she took off the headphones she was wearing and Jill recognized her: it was Tiffany, who lived down the street.  
Gale found the spot in the fence that had been pried open some years back - never fixed - and helped Tiffany through. The two girls walked to the truck, Tiffany with the skateboard under one arm. She got into the car and unslung the backpack she wore, opening it up.  
"Everyone, this is Tiffany Violet," Gale said.  
Tiffany looked up from her backpack and gave them all a slight nod, returned to rummaging. Jill spread her hands in a "What's she doing here?" gesture. Gale shrugged. But Eric said what everyone was thinking:  
"What the fuck is she doing here?" he said.  
"She's my friend," Gale said.  
"Since when?" Jill asked.  
"Yesterday."  
Stanley nodded while the rest of them looked confused. He patted Gale on the shoulder while Tiffany wasn't looking, gave her a thumbs up.  
"Do you really think she should be here?" Bobby asked.  
"She lives on the same street as the rest of us do," Gale said.  
"You're all talking about me like I'm not here," Tiffany said.  
"Sorry," Jill said.  
"Whatever," Tiffany said.  
Finally, she found what she was looking for. She pulled it out of her backpack with a satisfied little sigh and tossed it up into the bed of the truck. Jill picked it up.  
It was a little magazine, black & white, xeroxed and held together with large staples. There was a blurry picture of a rather ordinary-looking man on the cover. The title read:  
MAN OF YOUR DREAMS  
"What is this?" Eric said, looking over Jill's shoulder.  
"It's a zine," Tiffany said.  
"What?" Bobby said.  
"Like a punk zine or sci-fi zine," Tiffany explained. "You know, like something kids or teenage fans make. But it's about Freddy."  
"Where did you find this?" Jill said, thumbing through the pages.  
"At this little bookshop I go to sometimes. It's downtown. I've found a couple issues there over the last few months. I don't know who's making them but there's some interesting things there. I decided to bring the ice cream truck issue."  
"Ice cream truck?" Stanley said.  
He got out of Gale's car and climbed into the bed of the truck. He looked over Jill's shoulder as well, reading silently.  
By now, the second feature - House - had started after a brief "Let's all go to the lobby" interlude. The creepy soundtrack to the film scored their discussion.  
"It's like children's drawings," Tiffany said, "and snatches of homework assignments, like 'What I did on my summer vacation' kind of stuff, but really twisted. Some old pictures and one newspaper article. The connection is the ice cream truck. They all say that Freddy used to use an ice cream truck to pick up his victims."  
"I didn't find that anywhere," Jill said.  
"It's not in any of the official paperwork, except that newspaper article, so I don't know if it's true or not. But Freddy's sort of a boogeyman, right?"  
"Right," Eric said.  
"Well, what if it doesn't matter what he was before he died? What if it only matters what we make of him? The horror show that we turn him into with our fears. These kids thought that ice cream trucks were kinda creepy, had dreams about them and most of them are dead now. So Freddy has an ice cream truck that he can use in the dreams now."  
"So you believe Jill here?" Eric said. "You think she's on to something?"  
"Oh, yeah," Tiffany said. "I've been having dreams about him, too."  
Eric was silent.  
"We got everybody these," Jill said after a moment.  
She and Gale handed out the Stay Awake pills, two bottles for everyone. Eric looked at his, shook his head.  
"Take these whenever you feel tired," Jill said.  
"Make coffee and cigarettes your friend," Gale said.  
"Caffeine, soda," Jill said. "Sugar, candy. Go nuts. Stay awake. Going to sleep means death."  
"I can't believe this," Eric said. "I can't believe I'm buying all this. But I am."  
They talked all the way through the second feature, and kept talking while the first feature started up again, late into the night.  
All they could decide on was that they were probably all fucked.

7

The next day - Monday morning, early. Bobby tried to concentrate on football practice, tried to stay awake, no matter what. He sucked on the field, incurring the wrath of Riley, who rode him on every mistake, every little screw-up.  
"Garfield!" Coach screamed after a particularly bad throw Bobby had attempted went horribly wrong. "What the Hell do you call that?! Are you throwing daisies out there instead of pigskin?! Jesus H Christ, boy, get your head in the game!"  
Bobby sat out a play, on the bench, head in his hands. He slapped himself in the face several times, took a swig of Gatorade. Had to stay awake. Had to.  
"Garfield, you're up!" Coach called him back in the game.  
Bobby got up from the bench, ran out into the field, assumed the position. Several of his teammates started laughing. He looked around, nervous.  
"Garfield, what the Hell is the matter with you?!" Coach called. "Forget your uniform?!"  
He looked down, saw that he was naked. Shit, he was dreaming. He was asleep! How could he wake himself up?  
Then he saw him.  
The man standing behind Coach, a hand on his shoulder. Freddy. He decided to continue on with the play. Maybe he'd wake up if he got hit - hard - by Riley or someone blocking him.  
The ball was hiked to him and he went back to throw it. But it didn't feel right. Something was wrong with it. It felt squishy. He looked at it and saw that it was a literal pig skin: a football made out of the skin of a recently dead pig and stitched together haphazardly.  
And it was leaking.  
Blood poured out of the stitches, covering his hand and traveling down his arm. Oh, God, let this dream end. Why hadn't he been tackled by now?  
He looked up and saw that everyone on the field was just standing and watching him. Riley took off his helmet and shook his head, remained silent. Bobby felt the football in his hand crush and watched as it came apart, guts spilling out of it. That was when he saw that the skin of the ball had a face on it.  
It was Jill's face.  
Not pig skin, then. Human skin.  
He dropped it in disgust, screamed, backed away from it. Someone yelled, "Fumble!" and there was suddenly a pile-up of beefy football players on top of the disgusting ball. He shook his head, continued backing up.  
That was when the ground gave out under him. It was like quicksand. The grass under his feet grabbed him, pulled him under. He grasped at the ground, trying to hold on, but it was no good. He was pulled under entirely.  
There was utter blackness for a few moments, then he felt ground - no, strike that, floor. He felt floor. He was on his knees on some kind of floor.  
He got up, looked around. Light slowly faded in and he saw that he was in the locker room off the football field. Time had advanced. All of the other players were showering after practice. Now, his nudity wasn't an issue, so that was something, at least.  
He tried to act naturally, walked into the shower, grabbed a bar of soap on the way. He stood under a showerhead, cleaned himself off. But something wasn't righ here, either. The water didn't feel right. It was heavy somehow. He cupped some of it in his hand, tasted it.  
Sweat.  
Pure sweat was showering down on him. He spit it out immediately and stepped back from the showerhead. Everyone else looked at him, shook their heads.  
Slowly, everyone else faded out of existence, leaving only himself and Riley. The other young man seemed unaware of Bobby and simply showered, cleaning himself off. Bobby saw that Riley had a huge penis, much larger than his own. It was embarrassing. Bobby looked away. He felt inadequate in every way.  
No, he thought. He had to face this.  
He looked up, at Riley, but the other young man was gone. In his place was the man, himself.  
Freddy Krueger, in all his glory.  
It was all there: the fedora, the dirty red and green sweater, the hobo pants, the glove with razors on four fingers. He was horribly burned and - somehow even in the harsh light of the locker room - shrouded in shadow.  
Bobby turned to run but Krueger was there, too. He grabbed Bobby's face with his non-gloved hand, wagged a razored finger reproachfully at him.  
"No, no, no," Krueger said. "You're not going anywhere, musclehead."  
Bobby kicked him in the stomach - a hard, powerful kick. Krueger let go of him. Bobby ran, deeper into the locker room, which now seemed to be row upon endless row of lockers.  
How far could they possibly go? His question was answered when he saw the sun rising above a row of lockers in the far distance.  
"Shit," he said.  
He kept running. After a few moments, he couldn't hear Krueger behind him anymore. He had lost him.  
That was when the boogeyman popped out of a locker just ahead of him, caught him again. As the boogeyman emerged from the locker, footballs fell out of the locker with him - hundreds of them, thousands of them - all of them made out of human skin, all of them with screaming faces stamped on them.  
Krueger laughed, grabbed one of the footballs and forced Bobby's mouth open.  
"Open wide!" he said.  
And - impossibly - he stuffed the football down Bobby's throat. Bobby could feel the football forcing his windpipe open, cutting off his air, breaking his collarbone as it traveled further down his body. Laughing, Freddy grabbed another ball and shoved it down the boy's throat. And another.  
And another.  
And another.  
Soon, Bobby was practically bursting with footballs. His face was blue, veins enlarged, gasping for air. His eyes were bleeding.  
His final thoughts were of Jill. How he had failed her.  
He never woke up.  
On the football field, his body fell off the bench he had been sitting on, asleep, and hit the ground. A crowd was around him almost immediately. Riley pushed everyone else aside, administered mouth to mouth, tried as hard as he could to save him.  
But it was no good.  
Freddy had him now.


	4. The Stay Awake

1

"He's dead," Jill said.  
She had been crying, but not much. Somehow, none of it seemed real. Maybe it was her lack of sleep. Or maybe it was the fact that she had started thinking of all them - herself, Bobby, Gale, Eric, Stanley and Tiffany - as soldiers. And soldiers died. Often.  
Jill didn't realize until she finished talking that she had been saying all this out loud. Good thing she was in Dr. Saunders' office, where all her conversations were nice and confidential.  
"Soldiers?" Dr. Saunders said.  
"Yeah," Jill said. "We're all fighting something. Someone."  
"Who?"  
"Fred Krueger."  
Dr. Saunders raised her eyebrows in surprise. She leaned back in her chair.  
"The child killer," she said.  
"Yes," Jill said. "You know about him?"  
"Of course."  
"That's who we're fighting."  
"But he's dead."  
"You think I don't fucking know that?! I'm not stupid, you know? We've done all we can, we've researched, we've read, anything to stay awake."  
"Why do you need to stay awake?"  
"Because that's how he gets us," Jill said. "When we're asleep. When we dream."  
"What does he do to you?" Dr. Saunders asked.  
"He kills us, doc. Don't you get it? We're dropping like flies here. Jesse, Charlie, Bobby. Who's gonna be next?"  
"Do you want to talk about Bobby?"  
"No."  
"You don't want to talk about him?"  
"No, I don't."  
"The report says he swallowed his own tongue. But you don't believe that, do you?"  
"No."  
"Why?"  
Jill said nothing. Dr. Saunders leaned forward in her chair.  
"You loved him, didn't you?" she said.  
Jill choked back the tears. She wiped her eyes.  
"Yes," she said. "I did love him."  
"But did he love you?" Dr. Saunders asked.  
"What?"  
"Did he really love you? Or were you just another conquest to him? Like a trophy."  
"Fuck you."  
"It's just a suggestion."  
"Well, it's a dumb fucking suggestion, all right?"  
"Okay."  
"You sit there. You just sit there with your perfect little life and you don't even realize it. I mean, you can sleep! Do you realize how blessed you are? How wonderful that sounds to me? Just a night's sleep? If only I could just sleep!"  
"Jill," Dr. Saunders said, "none of this is real. I know it seems real, but it's just coincidence. This is not really happening. And listen to me - listen to me - you need to sleep. If you don't sleep, you'll die. Now when was the last time you slept?"  
"I fell asleep briefly on Sunday," Jill said. "Before that, it was Friday night. Or early Saturday morning, I guess."  
Dr. Saunders shook her head. Jill grabbed her purse, rummaged through it, came out with a cigarette.  
"Mind if I smoke?" she asked.  
She didn't wait for an answer and lit up, puffed deep. She looked at Dr. Saunders defiantly.  
"So," she said, "I guess I can't persuade you to write me a prescription for something to keep me awake? Or for something to suppress my dreams, right?"  
"I don't think something like that exists," Dr. Saunders said.  
"There must be something."  
Dr. Saunders sighed again before speaking.  
"There is an experimental drug," she said. "Hypnocil. I don't trust it."  
"I'll take anything at this point, doc," Jill said. "I'm grasping at straws here."  
"I'm not going to write you a prescription, Jill. It's out of the question. Now, let's move on."  
"You know what? I've come to a realization."  
"Yes?"  
"You can't help me."  
Jill got up and left, flicking her cigarette in the general direction of Dr. Saunders. The doctor looked at the burning, red ash, cocked her head to one side, as if contemplating it.

2

Bobby was buried on Wednesday. Jill found the funeral uncomfortable, awkward. Bobby's parents were completely broken up, naturally. And the whole football team showed up. Somehow the image of the entire Springwood High football team dressed in black standing around an open grave gave one pause. Jill's dad even made it, though Jill suspected he was chasing a story more than providing moral support for his daughter.  
The pastor read a lovely eulogy and everyone was respectfully maudlin but there was something in the air, an aura of paranoia, of people looking over their shoulders for something.  
After the ceremony was over, people broke into groups, to talk or leave, if they so wished. Jill, Gale, Eric, Tiffany and Stanley managed to get away from their parents and join up. Ann Franklin, strangely, was also with them. She had been hanging around the group since Tuesday morning.  
"First one down," Eric said.  
"Jesus, man," Stanley said. "Show some respect."  
"Hey, Bobby was my best friend, okay? Don't tell me how to deal with this. I haven't had any sleep for days. Neither have any of you, I imagine."  
"We can't go on like this," Jill said. "We have to get sleep somehow. Maybe if we pair off and take sleeping shifts."  
"What?" Eric said.  
"You know, one of us sleeps, the other watches the sleeper and when he sees that the sleeper is dreaming, bam, you hit the sleeper on the head, wake him up."  
"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Eric said.  
"You don't have to do if you don't want to. Do what you want, stay up, be alone. Go ahead. But I'm gonna go insane."  
"Are you gonna be okay?" Gale asked, put a hand on her friend's shoulder.  
Jill nodded.  
"I just need some sleep," she said. "I can't mourn Bobby right now."  
"Look," Tiffany said, "I gotta go. My dad's gonna beat the shit out of me if I don't get home soon."  
"Okay," Gale said. "I'll call you."  
"You better."  
She left, breaking away from them and heading through the parking lot to the church, where she had stashed her skateboard. Gale watched her go before returning her attention to the group.  
"I'm sorry, Jill," Eric said.  
"Forget about it," Jill said. "Gale, I want you to take a shift with me. I just have to sleep."  
"Okay," Gale said.  
Their talk was interrupted by Riley, who pushed himself into their circle. It wasn't hard considering his huge frame.  
"Whatever you're all planning," he said, "I have to be a part of it. Eric, you have my number. Call me when you have a plan that makes some kind of sense."  
Everyone was too shocked to respond verbally. They just nodded, more than one of them with their mouths hanging open. Riley nodded back and left, rejoining his football friends.  
"Did that really just happen," Stanley said, "or am I already asleep?"  
"I've been talking him around," Ann said. "But I didn't think he would actually reach out like that."  
"Sure glad he's on our side," Eric said.

3

At Jill's house, up in her room, she and Gale talked, Jill on her bed - gathering up enough courage to go to sleep - and Gale in a chair leaned against the wall right next to the bed. Jill had finally broached the subject.  
"So, you're gay?" she asked.  
"I..." Gale said. "Yeah, I guess so. I don't really know what I am. I like girls. I find them beautiful and want to be with them. So, whatever that means, I guess that's what I am."  
"Do you find me beautiful?"  
"You're not really my type."  
Jill smiled. She shook her head.  
"This is all just so crazy," she said. "I guess I was just blind. I never suspected. Are you and Tiffany...?"  
"I don't know," Gale said. "I like her. A lot. But, I'm not sure if she's ready. Not sure if I'm ready."  
Jill nodded.  
"Take it slowly if you can," she said. "She seems...nice. She's got something...inside. I can't believe that this - all this - is what's bringing us together. I never thought I'd be fighting alongside Tiffany. Or Ann and Riley! Jesus."  
"Do you wanna talk about Bobby?" Gale said.  
"No. It hurts too much. I wanna talk about you. I want you to be happy."  
"I don't know if I can."  
"What?"  
"Take things slowly, like you said. We may not have much time together. We might all be dead soon."  
A moment of silence passed between them. Jill leaned over and kissed Gale on the forehead.  
"You're the bravest person I know," she said. "Much braver than me."  
"Don't say that," Gale said.  
"Okay. I'm ready. I'm going to sleep. If I seem like I'm dreaming, wake me up."  
"What should I be looking for?"  
"I read up on sleep a bit in the library. Look for Rapid Eye Movement. Apparently, that means I'm dreaming."  
"And what does that look like?"  
"My eyes will be moving under my eyelids."  
"Great. Glad it's such an obvious tell..."  
"Thanks, Gale."  
"Don't mention it."  
Jill laid back on her bed and closed her eyes. She was asleep almost instantly.

4

Tiffany danced. Her room was her place and no one else's. Every inch of wall space was covered in posters and fliers. It was similar to Gale's room but more erratic, chaotic.  
Music blasted in her ears, the volume cranked to 11. She danced like a robot, her movements mechanical, stylized. This was how she stayed awake, how she avoided Freddy: loud music, constant movement. The caffeine and pills helped, of course, but this was the main thing.  
She didn't hear the knock on the door, didn't hear the key in the lock a moment later, didn't hear the door open. She didn't know anyone was in the room with her until her headphones were ripped off her head.  
"Dad!" she said. "You can't come in my room! This is the only place I have!"  
Her father stood a full foot taller than her and was twice as wide. He wore jeans and a tight, white T-shirt. His hair was oily and thinning.  
"What's this I hear about you sneaking off to meet up with some girl?" he said.  
"Dad," she said, "what I do with my time is my business. I don't--"  
He slapped her across the face, pointed an accusing finger at her, right in her face. Tiffany held the painful spot on her cheek where he had hit her.  
"Now you listen to me," he said. "Are you some fucking faggot? Because if you are, I'll kill you. Do you hear me? I will not have that kind of thing in my family, even if you are a girl."  
Anger bubbled up inside her and maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe it was the circumstances they were all going through, but it all came tumbling out of her.  
"Oh yeah?" she said. "I can't be gay but you watch your damn porno movies where all the girls make it with each other. That's okay?"  
"That's not the same thing and you know it. They only ever do it to satisfy guys. That hardly even qualifies as bisexual. In fact, why am I defending myself here?! I can watch what I want. The real question is what have you been doing watching my tapes?! I oughta beat you within an inch of your life."  
"Shut up! I found your other tapes! Your secret tapes. You know the ones I mean, the ones with the men. Yeah. Big, strong, muscly men fucking each other! You hypocrite, you fucking hypocrite!"  
He punched her.  
Not a slap, not a push, but a punch - hard - across the face. She went down, blood pouring out of her nose. He stood over her, legs apart, almost straddling her.  
"If you say another word," he said, "just one, I will put an end to you. You hear me? I will dig your grave. And spit on it."  
Tiffany looked up at him for a moment, wiped the blood out of her face. She shook her head.  
"No," she said.  
"What?" he said.  
"I said no!"  
She kicked him in the balls. He crossed his legs, grasped his crotch in pain. Tiffany rolled out from under him and ran out of her room, downstairs, heading for the front door.  
He caught her by the hair before she could reach the door. She didn't scream but she yelped in pain. He turned her towards him.  
And that was when she screamed.  
He was still her father - still Buford Harold Violet - but he was also Freddy Krueger. It was like the two of them overlapped and, in a way, they did. Both of them lived under a secret.  
When had she gone to sleep? The only thing she could figure was when he had punched her. She had to fight back. Had to do something. The walls were bleeding; green blood, thick and heavy, cascading down the walls of the house. Tiffany started to panic. Her father looked down on her like a demon, smoke billowing from his nostrils.  
She pulled away from him, some of her hair coming out in his hand. She got away from him but he kicked her in the ass and she went flailing into the kitchen, which was just off the main hall by the entrance.  
The harsh, flat light of the kitchen burned her eyes. In the corner of the room, on the kitchen counter, a clown doll danced insanely, laughing as it twirled and twirled. Tiffany screamed and got up from the floor, reached out for something to defend herself with, something, anything.  
Her hand closed around the butcher knife just as he jumped on her. She whirled around, bringing the knife up.  
It found its mark: up, under his chin, traveling up through his head. The very tip of the knife popped out of his right eye, neatly bisecting it. His mouth was open, a shocked look on his face. Blood flowed from the wounds and out of his open mouth, drenching her.  
He stood for a moment longer, gurgling up blood, then fell over backwards. Tiffany still held onto the knife and it gruesomely ripped out of him as he fell.  
She dropped the knife and dropped herself to the ground next to him. She was definitely awake now. It had been like sleepwalking, dreaming while she was awake.  
"Daddy," she said.  
She wrapped her arms around him, more of his blood soaking into her clothes. He had been a terrible person to her most of her life - had beaten her, had touched her inappropriately on occassion, had verbally abused her no end - but he had been her father, the only family she had. And now he was dead.  
Tiffany screamed, half crying, half wailing like a banshee. What could she do now?

5

Jill yawned, got out of bed, and headed downstairs. It was a bright, sunny morning. Almost too sunny: light was streaming in through the windows like the rays of an atomic blast. She felt rested, for the first time in what felt like ages. Sleep had done her good. In the kitchen, her father was making breakfast. She smiled and approached.  
"Hey, Dad," she said. "Morning."  
Her dad, as usual, didn't hear her. He continued making breakfast, scrambling eggs and turning bacon. It all smelled so good.  
"Wow," she said, "where did you buy the bacon? Smells amazing."  
She looked over his shoulder and watched, fascinated, as the bacon sizzled in the fry pan. The fat fried exquisitely, popping and shrinking to just the right size. And the eggs! Fluffy, yellow-white, beautiful. It was, perhaps, the best-looking breakfast she had ever seen.  
"Can't wait, Dad," she said.  
Her dad finished breakfast and poured it onto a large plate, brought it over to the table. He sat down in front of the plate and started eating.  
"Funny, Dad," she said. "Not gonna get me a plate? Okay, I'll get my own."  
She went to open a cupboard to grab a plate and her hand passed right through the handle. Like she was a ghost.  
"What the fuck?" she said. "Dad?!"  
She turned around and tried to grab her father by the shoulders. But, like the cupboard, her hands passed right through him. He couldn't see her, couldn't feel her. He didn't even know she existed.  
"What's the matter, Jill?" a voice said.  
Slowly, Jill turned towards the voice. She couldn't see anyone speaking but the voice came from the direction of the stove. Cautiously, she approached it.  
"Can your daddy not see you?" the voice said. "Poor Jill."  
She reached the stove, peered into the fry pan, which was still sitting on the stovetop. Inside, Freddy's face filled the whole pan. It was sizzling like the bacon fat.  
"You are so unappreciated around here!" Freddy said.  
She backed away, shaking her head. She was asleep! She was still asleep!  
"Gale!" she screamed.  
Freddy's head emerged from the fry pan, smiling at her. Soon, he pushed his shoulders through the pan.  
"Gale, wake me up!" she screamed.  
Then his arms were through, his clawed hand grasping the handle of the stovefront to help him along. He would be out any second now.  
"Gale, wake me the fuck up!"  
Freddy was almost out now, one leg propped on the kitchen counter. He pushed himself up, freeing the other leg. Just as he was fully out, Jill was shaken awake.  
She popped up in bed. Gale had both hands on her shoulders.  
"What the Hell happened?" Jill said. "Why didn't you wake me up sooner?"  
"I've been trying to wake you up for the last few minutes," Gale said.  
"Shit," Jill said. "This isn't gonna work. How long was I asleep?"  
"About an hour and a half."  
Jill shook her head in frustration. She rested her head in her hands, wiped the sleep out of her eyes, then looked back at Gale.  
"We're gonna have to take the fight to him," she said.  
"So what do we do?" Gale asked.  
"I have a few ideas. But it'll have to wait until tomorrow."  
"Do you want me to stay?"  
"No. I won't be going to sleep again. Do you want me to watch over you?"  
"Better not. I should get home before Mom & Dad start to worry. Gotta keep up appearances, right?"  
"Right," Jill said.  
"I'll call you in the morning," Gale said.  
Gale hugged Jill before leaving. Jill never felt so alone in her life.

6

Later, past midnight, Gale sat in her room on the floor, her television tuned to Elvira's Movie Macabre. The Mistress of the Dark was showing some odd British import.  
"God, look at those tits!" Gale said, transfixed by Elvira's cleavage.  
A knock at her window made her jump about two feet in the air. When she calmed down, she went to the window. She was dressed only in a much-too-large-for-her Iron Maiden T-shirt. She opened her window and gasped.  
Tiffany crouched there, having climbed up the rose trellis. Tears were in her eyes and she was covered in blood.  
"Can I come in?" she asked like a vampire.  
"Yes," Gale said instantly.  
She helped the girl in, got a better look at her. She was a mess: drenched in blood, face full of tears, hair unkempt.  
"Jesus Christ," Gale said. "What happened?"  
"I killed him," Tiffany said.  
"What?"  
"He's dead, I killed him."  
"Who?"  
"My dad. I killed my dad. He was Freddy. Somehow, he was Freddy. And he was hitting me, beating me. Oh, God, I killed my dad!"  
Gale took her into her arms and they embraced.  
"Come on," Gale said.  
She led Tiffany to the bathroom. It was private: she had her own one right inside her room. Gale got the shower going and undressed the girl while it got warm. She tossed the bloody clothes into the sink.  
"I stabbed him," Tiffany said, crying. "I stabbed my dad in the face. I killed him."  
Gale pulled off her T-shirt and threw it into the sink along with Tiffany's clothes. Now they were both naked. She led Tiffany into the shower and the warm water felt good on their skin. Gale grabbed the soap and began soaping up Tiffany. The blood began to wash away.  
"Look," Gale said, her face mere inches away from Tiffany, "you told me that he was an asshole. That he hurt you. Abused you."  
"But he was my dad," Tiffany said.  
Her crying started to abate, however. She was starting to get herself under control.  
"I know he was your dad," Gale said. "It was a terrible thing but there's nothing we can do about it. We can't change the past. Now what did you do with the body?"  
"I pushed him down the basement stairs. I don't know, maybe they'll think he was holding the knife and fell down the stairs when he was drunk. He was always drunk."  
Gale nodded.  
"Okay," she said, "that'll have to do. We'll go over there later tonight - no, I will. I'll go there and clean up...selectively, make it look like that was what happened. It might work."  
"Gale, he was Freddy," Tiffany said. "I was dreaming while I was awake. Like I was sleepwalking. How can that be?"  
"I don't know."  
They were silent for a moment. Tiffany hugged Gale. Most of the soap had washed away along with the blood.  
"God, this water feels so good," Tiffany said. "How are we gonna stay awake now?"  
Tiffany pulled back from the hug and looked at Gale. They stared deeply into each other. Gale thought long and hard in those few moments. Finally, she spoke.  
"Fuck waiting," she said.  
The kiss, when it came, was long, passionate. It was like the two of them had been waiting their whole lives for this moment, as if they were becoming who they were always meant to be. Finally, the kiss broke.  
"Oh my God," Tiffany said. "We're not dreaming, are we?"  
"No," Gale said, shaking her head. "Now give me those hands."  
They touched, explored, used every inch of each other's bodies for pleasure. And - for some short time, at least - they forgot about everything else. Right here, right now, they were the only two people in the world.  
And it was beautiful.


	5. Krueger

1

Eric knew he was asleep.  
That was worst part: knowing but having no power to do anything about it. The last thing he remembered before sleep overtook him was that it was almost two and he was trying to watch television to stay awake. Obviously, it hadn't worked.  
In the dream, he was standing in front of a little nowhere motel. In fact, it looked like the Bates Motel, right out of the movies. The flashing neon sign read:  
SPRINGWOOD  
And nothing else. Not "Springwood Motel" or "Vacancy" but just "Springwood." The neon sing flashed red but everything else was in black & white, just like an upper-tier Hitchcock movie. Or, at least, one of the better episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."  
Eric walked towards the motel, feeling he didn't have any other choice. He had already tried his usual techniques for waking himself up. None had worked.  
It started to rain and Eric quickened his pace, reached the wooden landing around the motel, got in under the awning. The first door was the office and Eric knocked on the door, which was standing open. A tall, thin man snapped up from behind the desk. He munched on Halloween candy out of a bag in one hand.  
"Great," Eric said, "Anthony Perkins. Hey, loved the last one, man."  
"What?" Perkins - or perhaps it was Norman Bates - said.  
"Nothing. Got a room?"  
"Of course we do, sir."  
He turned the register book towards Eric, handed him a pen. He turned to get a key as he spoke.  
"Just sign the register there," he said, "and I'll get you a key. Going to stay long?"  
"No," Eric said.  
He went to sign the register and saw the names already written there before him:  
Jesse Walsh  
Charlie Doyle  
Bobby Garfield  
Drake James  
And this was just on the page that he was currently on. Eric thumbed through the previous pages and found many names he had some vague memory of. Almost all Elm Street kids, he was sure.  
"Sir?" Perkins said.  
Eric looked up to find the man holding out a key to him. Perkins had that half-crazy, half-charming smile that he always did in these kind of movies.  
"Cabin one," he said.  
Eric signed the register - I.P. Freely - and took the key from Perkins. He made to leave, then turned back, pointed at the man.  
"I better not catch you spying on me," he said.  
"Oh, no, sir," Perkins said. "No offense, but you're no Janet Leigh. Or Meg Tilly, for that matter. Diana Scarwid..."  
Both he and Eric made "so-so" gestures with their hands. They shared a laugh then Eric nodded, satisfied. He headed to his cabin, unlocked the door and went inside. It was Janet Leigh's motel room, down to the purse full of money on the nightstand. Eric chuckled and grabbed the money out of the purse, tossed it onto the bed. He laid down on the bed among the bills, let himself feel like a big shot for a moment or two.  
There was a knock on the door. Eric sighed and got up to answer it.  
He opened the door to the massive, atmospheric rain storm outside, a high, whistling wind, and a girl standing in the doorway, drenched. Eric smiled. She might not have been Janet Leigh but she was a looker. Young - Eric guessed maybe fifteen or sixteen - with what appeared to be blonde hair. It was hard to tell in black & white: it might have been red or light brown.  
"Can I come in?" the girl asked.  
"Why do you want to come in?" Eric asked.  
The girl shrugged. She looked desperate. Her eyes looked weary, paranoid.  
"It's wet out," she said.  
"Okay," Eric said.  
She came in, sat on the bed. Eric turned the chair at the desk to face her and sat in it.  
"My name's Tina," the girl said.  
"Eric."  
"Nice to meet you, Eric."  
"Same to you, dream girl."  
Tina smiled.  
"Am I the girl of your dreams?" she said.  
"Well, I don't know about that," Eric said. "There's this one girl I know, Steph, she--"  
"Oh, yeah, I know her."  
"You do?"  
"Sure. He's gonna get her, too."  
"What?"  
"Let's not dwell on terrible things."  
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, you brought it up. 'He'? He who? Freddy?"  
Tina nodded.  
"Okay," Eric said. "That's what I thought. Now we're getting somewhere. Is this his place?"  
"What do you mean?" Tina asked.  
"This place, this motel? Did he dream this up?"  
"I don't understand."  
"This motel?! Come on."  
"But..."  
"But what?"  
"This is Springwood."  
"I know what Springwood is, babe, I live there. But I'm talking about this motel. What is this place?"  
"It's Springwood."  
"Now I don't understand. What are you talking about?"  
"This is all Springwood. The cabins, the office, the rain outside. It's all Springwood."  
"I... What... What about anything past the motel?"  
"There's nothing past this building," Tina said. "Just the rain."  
"So you're telling me that there's no way out of Springwood?" Eric said. "Is that what you're saying?"  
"Yes. This is all there is. Every once and while, Freddy adds another one of us here but, other than that, there's nothing."  
"Yeah, right."  
He got up from his chair, paced the room. He threw up his hands.  
"Come on, Freddy!" he said. "You're kind of reaching for a metaphor here, aren't you? Yeah, okay, I'm afraid of being stuck in Springwood all my life. True. So what? Think this is gonna scare me? I like Psycho, it's one of my favorites. Think I can't have a good time talking to Anthony Perkins? Or this girl? Sure, I would have preferred Janet Leigh - or, Hell, Steph - but she's a looker, too. Come on, try harder!"  
"I wouldn't taunt him like that," Tina said.  
"Ah, fuck him! He's got nothing!"  
The floor dropped out from under him. Eric fell into darkness.  
And screamed.

2

Maria Ramirez couldn't sleep. It was around two in the morning and it didn't look like she would be getting any sleep tonight. And when she couldn't sleep, she baked.  
Cookies.  
They were her real passion. She tried every new recipe she could get her hands on, as well as experiments that were all her own. Tonight's batch was nothing too experimental - white chocolate macadamia nut - but delicious, nonetheless. She took another bite of a cookie, savored the scrumptious taste.  
She sat at her dining room table, took a book with her. She drank coffee, ate a few cookies and her read her book.  
It started off normally - one of her trashy romance novels - but started to get strange as she progressed through it. The story was set in an unnamed, normal, small Middle America town. The protagonist was a strong-willed young Latina woman who was married to her rather unsavory work but loved a man she wasn't supposed to love: Frank Kramer, a local foundry worker who was hunky, beautiful and a little dangerous.  
Maria liked it, liked the understated sexiness of it. However, a quarter of the way through it, a strange subplot was added, something that one normally didn't see in these kind of books. There was a serial killer on the loose in the town, a particularly nasty one who preyed on children.  
Frank was accused of these horrible crimes but the heroine stuck by his side, defending him all the while. Maria, however, was not convinced of the character's innocence. There was too much evidence. And when Frank got off on a technicality, the book treated it like a triumph but it raised Maria's eyebrows.  
Another worrying aspect about the book was that it all seemed eerily familiar. Maria seemed to recall a case similar to the one described in the book, one that had occured right here in town when she was a child.  
Around this time in the book, the plot up to this point was suddenly revealed to be a book-within-a-book, which was being read by a young woman suffering from insomnia and trying to pass the time in the middle of the night. A woman who liked cookies.  
Maria threw the book down and stood up from the dining room table. The cover of the book illustrated a woman who looked like herself. She was draped in the arms of a strong man, a man with rippling muscles and a firm ass. A man whose face was horribly burned. The background of the illustration was a striped red and green pattern.  
As Maria watched, blood flowed out of the book and onto the table. Maria backed away further. She was still holding a cookie.  
Sensing movement from the cookie, she looked at it. Maggots crawled through the meat of the savory treat. Maria screamed and threw it across the room.  
Maria turned to leave the dining room and saw the front page of a newspaper stuck to one of her walls. The headline proclaimed:  
LOCAL GIRL CLAIMS: "I SURVIVED FREDDY"  
The picture under the headline was a picture of herself when she was about ten years old. Maria tore the page down, looked at it more closely.  
"What the fuck?" she said.  
The story went on to describe how Maria Ramirez, age 10, had claimed, shortly after Fred Krueger was taken into custody, that she was picked up by Freddy in his ice cream truck. When he attempted to restrain her and take her to his boiler room, she jumped from the vehicle, sustaining some minor injuries but escaping with her life. Her testimony, along with several other children, was the meat of the prosecution's case.  
It all started to come back to Maria. She had pushed it out of her mind, with the help of her parents, and had sealed it away. But now she remembered. Remembered that car ride. But an ice cream truck? That didn't seem right. When she thought of it now, she pictured a white van. Maybe she had got it wrong as a child. Not the identification of the driver but of the vehicle itself. She had never liked ice cream trucks.  
"You're not going to get away from me again," a voice said.  
Freddy came running out of the kitchen, a demon in a red and green sweater, clawed hand raised above his head. He roared, his mouth open, face a shadowed terror. Steam came flowing out of the kitchen in his wake, billowing up to the ceiling, as if the house had caught fire. Maria thought it looked like he had emerged from the gates of Hell itself.  
She screamed and ran back towards the dining room table. Instinctively, she grabbed the cup of hot coffee and deliberately spilled it onto her free hand. The pain was intense and she instantly awoke, still sitting at the table.  
She had survived. Again.

3

Ann ran.  
It was all she could do, her only true skill. She had tried her hand at acting, when she was a Freshman, but hadn't taken to it. Track was where her skills lay. So she could run. Boy, could she run.  
And she did. She ran down a long corridor, lights flickering on and off, horrific wailing coming from seemingly everywhere. The corridor was green, sickly-looking. The smell was horrendous.  
There were people up ahead. A whole group of people, huddled together, trying to stay warm. Ann darted towards them.  
Around her, the corridor began to change. The walls suddenly grew shelves, which were soon lined with canned goods and bottles of water. Ann was almost on top of the huddled group of people, could see them better now.  
They wore drab, brown rags, and all of them were hunched over. Ann reached them, stopped. She looked around.  
Now she understood where she was. It all came to her, like information always does in dreams. It all made sense.  
This was a bomb shelter. The bombs had dropped and now she was sealed in here, doomed to live the rest of her life in a living nightmare, half-alive, half-dead.  
"Oh, God," she said. "Help me."  
The group of people turned around. They were horrible, mutated creatures, radiation having changed them, twisted their bodies. Ann screamed and backed away from them.  
The bomb shelter was now so small. Claustrophobia pushed in on her at the same time that the mutants did the same. They reached out for her, mouths open in silent screams.  
There was an inhumanly loud ringing sound. It pierced Ann's ears.  
She sat up, awake.  
She was at her desk, in her room. She had fallen asleep, despite all her attempts to stay awake. The ringing was her alarm clock. She had been smart enough to set it every hour, just in case she went to sleep. Seems as if it had paid off.  
She put her head in her hands and cried. It had just been a nightmare, but it was all so plausible. The whole world was going to Hell. America and the USSR were going to bomb the shit out of each other and the rest of the world was going to follow.  
There was no way out. So what did it matter if she died in her sleep?

4

The Witching Hour. Springwood.  
It seemed like everyone that Wednesday night had nightmares. All across town, people woke in their beds, covered in sweat, musing on half-remembered images of terror. Children, especially, had it rough that night. More than three-quarters of the children under the age of ten had a nightmare during this time.  
Freddy Krueger stood tall above Springwood tonight. His evil spread across the town like a shroud, covering it in a blanket infested with maggots.  
In a dive bar downtown, Donald Thompson - former chief of police and now a lowly security guard - awoke from a drunken stupor, shaking off the image of a burned woman descending into a void that had once been her bed. Was it his ex-wife, now deceased? He couldn't remember.  
In the corner of an alley near Joe's Bar, a teenage runaway named Taryn White woke up, as much from the cold rain that had begun to fall and soak her as from her nightmare. She cried for a few moments then got up, trying to see if she could score dope off someone. She tried not to think about what she would have to do to get her fix.  
At Beefy Boy, Bryan - who always seemed be working the graveyard shift these days - tried to put his nightmare out of his mind: a biker driving up to the drive-thru window and shooting him. It proved hard to shake.  
At the college, a young woman butchered three co-eds and later claimed that she had dreamed it all before it happened. She was committed some time later.  
Freddy reigned, Freddy rocked.  
Those events that he didn't directly have a hand in were still a result of his evil. It was something primal, something that existed in everyone. Some people just needed a little push to go over the edge.  
People like Tiffany.

5

Gale and Tiffany lay in bed together, both naked, both holding onto each other, limbs entangled as if they were one person. Gale knew that she would have to leave soon, would have to go over to Tiffany's house and fake an accident. She had no idea if she would be able to pull this off but she had to try. For the sake of the young woman currently in her arms.  
Gale looked at Tiffany, who looked at her back. They didn't speak at first. A kiss came and went, fast but sincere.  
"That just happened, didn't it?" Tiffany said.  
"Yes," Gale said. "Did you like it?"  
"Yeah!"  
"Me, too."  
"I wanna do it again."  
Gale sadly shook her head. She kissed the tip of Tiffany's nose.  
"Not tonight," she said. "I have to go to your house soon."  
"Fuck, that was tonight," Tiffany said. "Seems like ages ago."  
"It'll be okay."  
"I know. The cops in this town aren't exactly what you'd call competent. But I just can't get it out of my head. I lost it. He lost it. It was like we were both crazy. I felt I'd lost my mind."  
"It's not your fault. You were defending yourself."  
"I was. But I wasn't myself."  
"Somehow this all seems like Freddy."  
"What?"  
"All of this. More than just the dreams. This street. This town. It's like it's all Freddy."  
"A big red and green sweater made out of about fifteen thousand people."  
"Had to be us, didn't it?" Gale said.  
"Naturally," Tiffany said.  
"Couldn't have been a generation earlier or later."  
"Think we'll make it?"  
"I don't know."  
"Be honest."  
"I don't think we will," Gale said.  
"Thanks for being honest," Tiffany said.  
"Of course. I better get ready to go."  
She made to get out of bed but Tiffany grabbed her by the ass and dragged her back into bed, back into a kiss. Her hands explored Gale's body as they kissed.  
"Okay," Gale said when the kiss broke, "maybe we have time to do it once more."  
Tiffany smiled and they tumbled into bed together.

6

High.  
It was a wonderful word - beautiful, even. Drake thought that maybe - just maybe - it was the greatest word in the English language. Three thousand bucks could buy a Hell of a lot of smack.  
Just an hour or so earlier he had ridden the needle, all the way down to that deep place somewhere below him, that hazy world of pleasure, that funk that no other drug could quite equal. He was coming down from it now, which was annoying but okay, he supposed.  
He and Steph lived in a shithole house far down Elm Street: it was a little place, one story, which connected to a dark back alley. It was late, nearly one in the morning. Drake lay on the couch in the living room and watched a cockroach crawl up his leg. Steph sat on the floor in the front of the couch, watching television. Drake couldn't quite make out the image on the screen. It looked like accident footage: violent, gruesome stuff.  
"Steph," Drake said. "What are you watching?"  
She didn't move: was like a zombie, in fact, just watching the screen in silence. Annoyed, he swatted the cockroach away and leaned over to get a better look at her. She stared at the television screen, eyes unblinking. He waved a hand in front of her face. Nothing.  
Abruptly, the channel on the television changed. There was a whine of static, then a picture developed. A news anchor sat a news desk.  
"Breaking news from Springwood," he said, all blonde hair and professionalism, with extra added fake empathy. "A local young couple was found murdered in their homes tonight. Authorities have not released their names but it is known that they lived on Elm Street. What's the matter with that street, anyway?"  
Drake frowned. He sat up fully on the couch, eyes glued to the screen.  
"Authorities say that the house was, quote, painted in blood," the newscaster continued. "The couples' organs were stacked neatly in the middle of their living room, as if arranged to watch the television, which had been left on when police made the discovery. A large stash of heroin was found in the house. Fucking druggies."  
Drake laughed, shook his head in disbelief. This guy was totally getting fired tomorrow.  
"Over to Jessica, for the weather," the newscaster said.  
The camera panned out, revealing a gorgeous redhead with large breasts that were practically spilling out of her low-cut dress. The redhead leaned forward, providing an even better view of her cleavage.  
"Look out, Springwood residents!" she said. "Today's forecast calls for severe thunderstorms, earthquakes, wild fires, corpses raining from the sky, acid rain, and Apocalypse. Oh, and Drake?"  
Drake fell off the couch in shock, landing on the ground next to Steph, who still didn't move an inch. The TV vixen climbed over the news desk, pressed her face and breasts against the screen.  
"Do you know what the last thing your father saw before he blew his brains out was?" she asked.  
Drake shook his head. On screen, the vixen changed - in a flurry of static - into the visage of a badly burned, terrifying figure.  
"Me!" the boogeyman said.  
Drake covered his eyes like a five-year-old. The television channel changed again. The program now was a painting instruction show. A pleasant man with a large afro talked softly, comfortingly while painting a benign landscape.  
Slowly, Drake dropped his hands to eye the screen. Nothing out of the ordinary now. It was the drugs. Of course it was. Playing tricks on his mind. Absently, he scratched at his left inner elbow, where he shot up. His veins itched something fierce.  
What the Hell?  
Now it felt as if something were moving through his veins, something alive and with real substance. It was painful, excruciating even.  
Drake got up and ran - tripping and falling more than once on his way - to the small table off the kitchen. On the table were the baggies of heroin he had bought from Maria a few days back. As quick as he could, considering the pain, he prepared and cooked up a batch. He drew the hot liquid into the needle, then brought the needle with him into the kitchen, turned on the light. Wincing at the pain in his body - it had started to spread throughout him - he held the needle up to the harsh light. There was something foreign swimming in the liquid.  
He squinted and it was as if his eyes suddenly had a zoom function. He could see the tiny particles close-up now. They almost looked like sperm, little wriggling tadpole-things. But each one of them had a face. A hideous, grinning face.  
The face of the boogeyman from the newscast.  
Drake dropped the needle in terror. Those things were in him now.  
Growing.  
Now the pain in his body was unbearable. The things inside him felt like large snakes, wriggling through his insides. His stomach churned and he looked down. Sure enough, snake-like forms sloshed through him, just under his skin.  
As he watched, one of them popped through his stomach. He screamed in pain and blood sprayed out of the wound. The snake-like thing smiled up at him. Then it spoke.  
"What's the matter, Drake?" it said. "Bad trip?"  
Then it writhed out of his body, dropping to the floor. More followed. It felt like his whole body was emptying out. He felt as if he were sinking into the floor and the kitchen disappeared, replaced by a brownish liquid environment, in which he floated. The snake-like things surrounded him.  
His body began to break up. He watched as his hands separated from his body. Then his feet, then his legs and arms. Then his pelvis. Then his chest. Each part formed into a good-sized ball and joined the liquid.  
Now he was just a head, yet he could still feel pain throughout his entire body. He floated and floated, until his head ran into something. It appeared to be plastic. Translucent plastic.  
Through it, he could see a vast, dizzying boiler room, red hot. Then a figure came into view.  
It was him. The boogeyman.  
Freddy.  
He was gargantuan and whatever Drake was floating in, Freddy held in one hand. Freddy's other arm had a sleeve rolled up and Drake saw that he had tied off the arm near the shoulder.  
That was when Drake realized what it was that he was floating in. It was a syringe. A needle.  
And he was about to be shot into Freddy's arm.  
Krueger stuck the needle into his arm, pushed the plunger forward. Drake surged forward, going about a thousand miles an hour. Multiple G-forces pressed against his face. He screamed as his skin was torn away. Horrendous pain, followed by death.  
By the time he reached Krueger's arm, he was nothing but an empty skull tumbling around the boogeyman's veins. Freddy laughed, low and scary.  
In the real world, on the couch, in front of the television, Drake coughed, choked. Steph snapped around, saw that Drake was vomiting, on his back, choking. She tried to do what she could but it was no good.  
Drake had overdosed on nightmare.


	6. The Dream Pool

1

Eric - still in the dream - landed in a puddle. Crashed was probably a better word for it. He rolled over, got to his feet. Looking around, he found that he was in the back alley again, the one with Joe's Bar at the end of it.  
It was no good. He couldn't get out of the dream. He collapsed to his knees in frustration, buried his face in his hands. After a moment, there was a hand on his shoulder.  
"Eric," a voice said. "Eric, get up."  
Eric looked up and saw Taryn, in her full biker punk goddess outfit, black mohawk high above her head. She helped him to his feet.  
"You have to keep going," she said. "If you keep moving, you might be able to get ahead of him."  
"Who are you?" Eric asked. "I mean, here in the dream. You're not like you are in real life."  
"That's a bit complicated. In dreams, things don't always happen in the right order. I'm, shall we say, back-tracking here. Helping out where I can."  
"What happened?"  
"I can't say too much. But let's just say that I only exist here now."  
"Bummer."  
"Right?"  
Eric gave her his most charming smile. He shrugged.  
"Think we have time to...you know?" he said.  
"You're not my type," she said.  
"Taryn, come on!" a female voice called out.  
Eric couldn't see the other woman but she had to be close by. Maybe in a connecting alley.  
"All right, Tracy," Taryn said, "be right there!"  
"Got a date?" Eric said.  
"You could say that. Now go. And don't stop."  
She started to run off but stopped across the alley from Eric. She turned towards him.  
"Ah, fuck it," she said.  
Her voice sounded far away now, even though they were only separated by a few feet. Eric strained to hear her.  
"I'll probably catch Hell for this," Taryn said, "but I have to try."  
"I can't hear you," Eric said. "Speak up!"  
"Jill is reading about the Dream Pool right now! Listen to her! It can help! It's how I found..."  
But he couldn't hear her anymore. Smoke filled the alley and she was gone, presumably with whoever this Tracy was, off in some other dream world.  
"Dream Pool?" Eric said. "What the Hell?"  
Eric ran into the smoke and entered another dream state.

2

Gale was drenched in sweat and blood. Not her own blood but Mr. Violet's blood. It was considerably congealed by this point, which made her job harder. She collected blood from the kitchen and spread it around Mr. Violet's body in what looked like a realistic pattern. It wouldn't stand up to much scrutiny but Tiffany was right: the police in this town were incompetent, fumbling boobs who would barely investigate this case. Violet's dad had not been well-liked around town. No, the bigger question was what would happen with Violet herself. She was still a minor and would have to go into foster care or be taken in by someone.  
It was a problem but one she couldn't think about right now. She had to clean the kitchen, make it spotless. No, that wasn't quite right. She couldn't make it look completely spotless. She had to dirty it up a bit, maybe make some food and spill some of it around the place. She had a few drinks from a beer in the fridge and dropped the half-empty can down the stairs to help with the story they had developed.  
She made to turn back towards the kitchen but stopped. At the bottom of the stairs, a pool of water was forming; filling up like the dream she had the other night.  
She had fallen asleep. It had been so many days now that she was falling asleep while standing up, walking around, even.  
The corpse of Mr. Violet, on the stairs, began to stir. She could hear the scraping sound of metal on metal. Without stopping to think about it, she ran down the stairs, past the stirring dead man and stepped into the pool of warm water at the bottom of the stairs.  
She drifted into the water, sank underneath it, explored. She found an exit, a patch of light above her. She poked her head out of the water at this second point, looked around. She saw a seedy back alley, filled with smoke. Eric was running through it.  
"Eric!" she called.  
But he didn't hear her and kept running, into the smoke. Gale emerged from the pool and tried to follow him but she was engulfed in the smoke.  
She emerged in what appeared to be a long hospital hallway. Everything was lit with an eerie, sickly green light. She looked down the hallway one way, then the other. Everything looked the same.  
So, separated from Eric. Great.  
"Dr. Karlson," a voice over an intercom said, "you are needed in the E.R. Dr. Karlson."  
So there was life in this place, then. She wasn't the only one here. The lights flickered above her as she picked a random direction to walk. Didn't seem to matter, really.  
"You won't get away with it," the intercom voice said, as flat and calmly as it had sounded before. "I won't let you. They've been crawling through my brain for years."  
Gale shook her head.  
"Creepy," she said.  
"Dr. Eddie," the intercom said, "you are needed in surgery. Dr. Eddie."  
Then a doctor in full surgical gear came tearing down the hallway behind her, flanked by two nurses. Even though he was wearing a surgical mask, Gale instantly recognized Eddie, Iron Maiden's mascot. His skull-face was easily identifiable. The nurses who accompanied him were dark-haired twins and looked like something out of a fetish porn magazine. Their nurses outfits were latex and so tight you could see their ribs. Their cleavage alone could kill but it went further than that. They had stylized make-up: stitches, Bride of Frankenstein style. Hair to match: big, swept back with streaks of white. Eyeshadow like corpses. Skin like porcelain.  
Soon the entourage overtook her and turned into a room off the hallway. Gale followed them into the room.  
It was a vast surgical theater, like something out of the nineteenth century. The operating theater audience stretched out around her, stadium seating style. Sitting in the audience was everyone Gale knew. In her entire life.  
It was no surprise then that the patient on the operating table was herself. The Gale on the table screamed in pain. She was naked and held down on the table by wicked-looking straps.  
Dr. Eddie approached the table, said nothing of course. The nurses prepared the instruments: scalpels, syringes filled with sickly green liquid, a bonesaw, an old, rusty hammer, a machete, a dull chainsaw.  
The nurses looked down at the Gale on the table with relish, one on either side of her. They laughed at her, then shared a wet, lewd kiss.  
Dr. Eddie put his hands on either side of the Gale on the table's head. He patted her temples.  
"I need it out, doctor," the Gale on the table said. "You have to help me."  
Dr. Eddie made soothing gestures with his hands but remained silent. He held out a hand to the nurses, who were still otherwise engaged: they were all over each other now, full-on making out, grabbing each other's asses and breasts.  
Frustrated, Dr. Eddie slammed a fist down on the table right next to Gale's head. The nurses got the point and broke apart. Dr. Eddie, satisfied, held out a hand again.  
One of the nurses handed him the syringe. With obvious relish, he crudely plunged the instrument into the Gale on the table's neck, administered whatever drug the needle contained into her system.  
The Gale on the table was in obvious pain but she looked relieved as well. Once Dr. Eddie removed the needle from her neck, she looked up at him.  
"Thank you, doctor," she said. "Now please get it out."  
"You see how the patient calls out for help," a voice said.  
Gale - the one watching, not on the table - turned to regard the newcomer. It was Freddy. He was dressed much like a teaching surgeon from the last century, speaking to the audience. His burned face stood in stark contrast to his fine attire.  
"And we will answer!" he said.  
He didn't seem to notice Gale. This was when Gale realized that perhaps she was watching a dream that was meant for her but that she was somehow not being affected by. Had she found a way around Freddy, at least temporarily? Perhaps this dream wasn't ready yet and she had stumbled onto it only half-formed. Something to do with the way she had entered this dream - through someone else's dream first? She didn't know but this was proving instructive. She continued watching.  
Dr. Eddie used a scalpel to open up the Gale on the table's abdomen, from just below her breasts to just above her pubic hair. He looked up at the nurses for assistance.  
One of the nurses sat partway on the operating table while the other pushed fingers into her mouth, her other hand between the woman's legs, pleasuring her. Dr. Eddie snapped his fingers, annoyed. The nurses stopped what they were doing and got back to work.  
They pulled open the wound in the Gale on the table's stomach. Freddy chuckled as he watched.  
"Those hands can't be sanitary anymore," he said, to much audience laughter.  
"Get it out," the Gale on the table said. "Please! I need it out!"  
Dr. Eddie rummaged through the Gale on the table's innards, his arms getting bloody all the way up to the elbows. He pulled several times but obviously didn't succeed in doing what he wanted to do.  
"The tumor appears to be stuck in this bitch harder than we imagined," Freddy said. "This calls for more desperate measures."  
Freddy joined the surgical team now, grabbed the rusty hammer and swung a few hits into the open wound. He frowned, dropped the hammer absently to the ground and used his razored glove inside the Gale on the table's body. That didn't seem to work, either.  
He and Dr. Eddie shared a look. Dr. Eddie grabbed the chainsaw, held it up, seeking Freddy's approval.  
"By all means," he said, "be my guest."  
Dr. Eddie vigorously nodded his head and started up the chainsaw. The nurses - now standing off to one side of Dr. Eddie - looked on with unbridled sadism. They couldn't keep their hands off each other as the doctor cut into the open wound. Blood sprayed everywhere, covering Dr. Eddie, Freddy and the nurses, who opened their mouths to catch as much of Gale's blood as they could, then shared a bloody kiss.  
There was a loud crunch and Dr. Eddie looked satisfied. He turned off the chainsaw and threw it aside.  
"Excellent work, doctor," Freddy said. He then addressed the audience: "I will now remove the tumor that's been harming young Gale so..."  
He reached into the open wound and grabbed hold of something. The nurses were so turned on by now that they torn each other's latex uniforms open, exposing their breasts to each other and rubbing bloody hands all over them.  
With considerable effort, Freddy pulled whatever was inside the Gale on the table's body out: it was an entire other person - a girl - bloody and not moving. The Gale who was watching approached the table to get a better look. As she did so, the bloody girl's eyes popped open. She looked straight at the approaching Gale.  
It was Tiffany.  
"Run, Gale!" Tiffany said.  
Freddy whirled around to face the second Gale. For a moment, he seemed confused before regaining his composure.  
"Found a backdoor, did you?" he said. "No matter."  
He dropped Tiffany back into the body of the Gale on the table - she disappeared just as she reached the open wound - and ran towards the watching Gale, glove raised. Gale turned and ran out of the operating theater and into the hallway.  
Freddy was right on her tail and she booked it. She concentrated and thought of the water, thought of the pool. A moment later, ahead of her, the hallway suddenly filled with water. It was as if she was looking down at a pool rapidly filling up.  
She ran even faster, could feel Freddy behind her, just out of reach. When she reached the water, she jumped into it.  
And escaped.  
She awoke at the bottom of the stairs in Tiffany's house, below the dead body of Mr. Violet. She checked her watch: 4:35am. There were two pressing issues at the forefront of her mind. She had to go get Tiffany and bring her back here, so she could call 911 at the time she normally got up in the morning. And she had to get to Eric. He was most likely still asleep and she had to wake him.  
The second issue seemed more pressing and she left the house, heading towards Eric. She just hoped that she would get there in time.

3

The collage library stayed open all night for student use. Jill, of course, wasn't a collage student but she bluffed her way in. It helped that the boy on night duty seemed to have a bit of a crush on her.  
She looked up everything she could about dreams, sleep studies and Hypnocil. There was almost nothing on the last subject but she found a few footnotes which were somewhat enlightening.  
It was when she got to Jung, while researching dreams, that she found the Dream Pool.

4

Steph sat at the red light, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, looking straight at the light, practically begging it to turn green. When Drake died earlier tonight, she had thought long and hard about what to do. The house was under his grandmother's name, the cops were almost certainly looking for him, and he hadn't been much of a boyfriend, anyway. So she had decided, after much deliberation, to dump his body into a lake just outside of town.  
So his body was in the back seat of the car, looking at her with dead open eyes in the rear-view mirror. It was unsettling to say the least and Steph avoided using the mirror as much as she could.  
The light finally turned green and Steph floored it. The windows were down, Steph's luscious red hair blowing in the wind, the radio was on loud - Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" rocking out - and the streets seemed eerily empty. The only other vehicles that Steph passed were big, anonymous freight trucks and the occasional train that she had to wait to pass.  
It was a few minutes later, while waiting on one of these trains, that the homeless man appeared. He seemed to materialize out of thin air, one minute not there, the next standing right beside Steph at the driver's side window.  
"Spare any change?" he asked.  
Steph jumped, surprised. She dropped the cigarette she was smoking and looked at the man. He was repulsive: hairy, smelly, dirty. He reeked of cheap booze and furtive, back alley sex.  
"Get the fuck away from me," Steph said.  
"Well, you..." the tramp said, "you fucking...bitch. Eat my dick, hear me?"  
He rummaged in his filthy clothes and pulled out an old, rusty screwdriver. He raised it to strike. Steph gasped. The train had finally passed and she stepped on the gas. The tramp's screwdriver nicked the car as it passed.  
"Come back, you bitch!" the tramp called after her.  
But she was gone, past the train crossing and down the street, heading out of town. Neighborhoods began to give way to ghettos, ghettos to warehouses. Steph frowned. She didn't recognize any of this.  
The warehouses started to become more surreal. Steph saw buildings stacked on top of other buildings, warehouses only half built, buildings halfway across the road. Once, she swore that a warehouse was creeping towards her, leaning over the car trying to get her.  
Finally, it seemed she had passed all the buildings. Now, everything seemed to be shady back-alleys. And the creepy tramp seemed to be standing at the end of all of them, screwdriver raised in anger.  
She was insane.  
That was what it was. She hadn't been sleeping hardly at all recently and she had simply lost her mind. That was it, had to be.  
Distracted by the tramp and her thoughts for a moment, she returned her gaze to the road ahead of her and slammed on the brakes. Drake's body, in the back seat, fell forward, his hands seeming to grab at her from behind. She yelped.  
The lake was right in front of her. She had nearly driven right into it, her wheels practically hanging over the steep edge of it.  
She got out of the car, managed to pull Drake out. It took some effort but she was able to drag him to the edge of the lake. With a final push, she got him over the side. It was dark and she couldn't see very well but she felt it took quite a long time for the sound of his body crashing into the lake to come. When it did, she nodded and turned back to the car. Just behind the car, a group of three little girls dressed in white played jump rope, singing an old song that Steph remembered from her youth, something about a boogeyman named Freddy.  
"What are you girls doing here this time of night?" she asked. Then: "You didn't see anything, did you?"  
The girls didn't answer, broke up their little play session and scattered, disappearing into the darkness. Steph tried to catch them but they proved elusive. Frustrated, she returned to the car, thinking of the old jump rope song, thinking of Freddy, and thinking of that glove she and Drake had stolen, then sold. Was there a connection? And, if not, why did it seem like there was?  
She got in the car, slammed the door shut behind her. That was when she noticed the ice cream truck.  
It was parked a short distance away, an eerie light coming from within. The engine revved as it sat in place.  
"What the Hell?" Steph said.  
"It's an ice cream truck, bitch, what do you think it is?" Drake said from the back seat.  
He leaned forward, soaking wet from his dive into the lake. The fish had already been at him: bits of him had been eaten away.  
Steph screamed.  
"Calm down, bitch," Drake said. "It's not me you have to worry about."  
The back doors of the ice cream truck opened and a figure emerged from it. He wore a dirty brown fedora and a red and green striped sweater. One hand was a claw with razored fingers. Somehow, Steph knew that this figure was Freddy.  
The Boogeyman.  
"I'd drive if I were you," Drake said.  
She started the car up, backed up, turned around and started driving. She drove like a maniac, but with less control than Gale. She careened down streets, nearly hitting road signs in her panic.  
The ice cream truck was right behind her the whole way. The radio came on, even though she had turned it off when she parked at the lake. "Sister Christian" again. But there was something else wrong here. The ice cream truck had no driver. It was driving itself.  
So where was Freddy?  
Her question was answered when Drake started screaming in the back seat. Steph turned and saw that blood was spraying from his stomach. He reached out to her as Freddy came tunneling through him. From the trunk? Perhaps.  
Drake, just a head, shoulders and arms now - separated from his bottom half - fell over, coming to rest on the floor of the back seat. Freddy lunged for Steph.  
She screamed as he reached around the seat and stabbed her in the chest. The car screeched to a halt as Steph started coughing up blood. Freddy laughed, a high-pitched, manic sound.  
Steph woke, clutching her chest. It was covered in blood. Frantically, she looked around. She was still in the car, Drake's body in the back seat. She had fallen asleep while driving. Straining, she looked to see where she had come to rest, her chest in excruciating pain.  
Managing to lean far enough to see where the car was, she gasped. The car had come to rest on a set of train tracks.  
And a train was coming.  
She reached out, trying to shift the car into gear. She was too late. The train hit the car at full speed and obliterated it, killing her and pulverizing Drake's body.

5

Eric ran. The dream kept changing. Once, he was in a dark wood that reminded him of the boy scout camp he used to go to during the summers; and something was chasing him. Later, it was a grade school cafeteria where the fat, ugly lunch lady served only maggots and cockroaches. Now, he was in a hallway lined with snow and ice. It was freezing cold and he held himself, rubbing his chest to try and warm up.  
There was a huddled figure on the ground ahead of him. The figure was nearly wrapped up in a ball. Wearily, Eric approached the figure. Half of him expected it to be Freddy.  
"Hey," he said. "Hey, you're not Freddy, are you?"  
The figure turned towards Eric and he saw that it was Steph. Immediately, he crouched down and put an arm around her.  
"You okay?" he said.  
She nodded. Then shook her head.  
"I don't know," she said. "I was just in my car. There was a train coming..."  
"Hey, that doesn't matter, okay?" he said. "Uh... are you warm enough?"  
"No."  
"Yeah, me neither. I...I guess I can't really make you any warmer. Um...it's not like I have a jacket to give you or anything."  
"It's okay."  
He helped her to her feet. That was when he noticed that her whole chest was bloody.  
"Jesus," he said, "what the fuck happened to you?"  
Steph looked down at her chest, felt it with one hand. Her palm came away bloody. Eric could see the wound now. It was nasty: four puncture marks. They looked deep.  
"He got me," Steph said.  
"Who did?" Eric asked. "Freddy?"  
Steph nodded. Eric shook his head.  
"No," he said. "No, I don't believe it. You're just Freddy messing with me. I don't accept it, okay? Steph's not dead! Fuck you, asshole! Don't you take her away from me!"  
He turned and ran in the opposite direction, leaving Steph alone. She started to cry and sank to the ground again, getting colder.  
Eric ran again. The ground slowly changed from ice and snow covered to an old carpet pattern, red and green stripes. The wallpaper was a repeating series of ice cream cones over and over.  
Eric's foot caught on something and he stumbled. He looked down and saw a section of the carpet had wrapped around his ankle, like it had come alive and grabbed him. As he watched, the carpet tightened around his ankle.  
Then it started to pull him under.  
Freddy's laugh seemed to come from all around him as Eric fell to the ground and tried to hold onto something. He screamed as realized he was losing.

6

Gale screeched to a halt in front of Eric's house at 4:45am. She jumped out of the car, left it running and ran around the house to Eric's bedroom window.  
She looked in, saw that he was asleep at his desk. She pounded on the window.  
Nothing.  
Frustrated, Gale looked at the window. She saw that the window was slightly ajar.  
"Yes," she said.  
She pushed the window up and climbed inside. Eric was shaking in his sleep as she approached him. She shook him. No go. She sighed, shook her head.  
And slapped him.  
Eric snapped immediately awake. Disoriented, he looked around, focused on her.  
"What the fuck?" he said.  
"You were asleep," Gale said.  
"How... How did you know?"  
"It's a long story."


	7. School Is Hell

1

It was Thursday morning. The long, Hellish Wednesday night was finally over, banished in the cold light of day. Jill, Gale, Eric, Stanley, Ann and Riley met before school. Tiffany wasn't there since she was busy talking to the police about her father's "accident."  
They sat around a bench: Jill, Eric and Stanley actually on the bench, Gale and Riley standing off to either side of it, Ann behind. Jill led the conversation.  
"I think I've found out what it is that Gale's able to conjure up in her dream," she said. "Jung called it the Dream Pool."  
"Jung?" Eric said.  
"Yeah, Jung," Jill said. "I was reading him last night."  
"You were reading Jung?"  
"Why is that so hard to imagine?"  
"I didn't say anything," Gale said.  
"Anyway," Jill continued, "Jung called it the Dream Pool. It's sort of a collective unconsciousness. A place where all dreams connect."  
"That makes a bit of sense," Eric said. "Gale was able to see my dream last night. Fuck, she was able to enter it."  
"Gale can connect to this Dream Pool somehow?" Stanley said.  
"Yes," Jill said. "I don't know how but she can. She can enter into our dreams."  
"Enter our dreams?" Ann said. "That's crazy."  
"Crazy but true," Gale said.  
"So this Dream Pool," Riley said. "How can we use it?"  
"Well, see," Jill said, "the Dream Pool is in all dreams. All of our dreams. We just have to find it. If we can find it, then we can meet up, join forces against Freddy."  
"Right," Riley said. "But how are we supposed to fight him? If he controls the dream world, what are we gonna use against him?"  
"I think I have a plan," Jill said.  
"You think?" Eric said.  
"Yeah, I think."  
"You better be right," Riley said.  
"What's the plan?" Gale asked.  
"First, we need to get some Hypnocil," Jill said.  
"What's that now?" Stanley said.  
"It's an experimental drug. Supposed to suppress dreams."  
"How is that possible?" Stanley said.  
"I don't know," Jill said.  
"Great," Eric said.  
"Look," Jill said, "it exists. That's what's important. We need it."  
"Why?" Riley said.  
"So here's my plan: we have to use ourselves as bait."  
"Shit..." Eric said.  
"You're crazy, lady," Riley said.  
"Crazy is not a strong enough word," Ann said.  
"Hear me out," Jill said. "We use ourselves as bait. We lure Freddy into a place we can control."  
"Where?" Gale asked.  
"I don't know yet," Jill admitted.  
"This isn't inspiring my confidence," Riley said.  
"If we can get him into a place like that," Jill continued, "then we trap him. Create a never-ending loop, make him think he's chasing us round and round an endless hallway. Meanwhile, we dope ourselves up with Hypnocil. If we're on it long enough and Freddy is trapped, I think he'll lose his power. By then, we can all sleep soundly."  
"I don't know," Eric said. "Lot of 'ifs' there."  
"Plus," Riley said, "it's suicidal. How do you know we won't all die carrying out your little plan?"  
"I don't," Jill said.  
"Man," Riley said, speaking directly to Eric, "I told you to call me when you have a good plan. Sorry, but this ain't it. I'm outta here."  
He left the group, heading for the cafeteria, Ann right behind him. Eric stood up, went to follow him.  
"Eric," Jill said.  
Eric turned back to face her but kept moving away, walking backwards. He put up both his hands in a resigned gesture.  
"It's not gonna work, Jill," he said. "Riley's right."  
Gale sat down on the bench next to Jill, taking Eric's place. Jill put her head in her hands in frustration.  
"God, I'm so fucking tired," she said.  
She shook her head, shook it off. The bell rang and all three of them sighed. They were not looking forward to the day ahead.

2

Ms. E, as everyone called her, was her usual fearsome self. Stanley was in theater class and Ms. E was sitting in the audience while students performed monologues on stage. The theater was impressive for a high school, with a capacity well in the hundreds, big, dramatic red curtains, and even a small balcony.  
"No!" Ms. E said. "That's not the way Hamlet would say it! Now, try it again!"  
Stanley waited backstage, wondering what kind of nonsense he would have to make up here. With everything that was going on, he hadn't even had a chance to memorize a monologue for class.  
He looked around at his classmates and noticed, for the first time, that they were all in full costume. Medieval period, elaborate and lush.  
"What the Hell's going on?" he said.  
"It's opening night," Jennifer, a bubbly aspiring actress, said. "Where have you been?"  
"Opening night?" Stanley said. "Of what?"  
"Hamlet," Jennifer said. "What else?"  
"What?"  
He looked more closely at their costumes. Jennifer was clearly playing Ophelia and Stanley saw, among his classmates, a Laertes, a Polonius, a Claudius, a Gertrude, a Horatio, even the two gravediggers. But where was Hamlet?  
"No," he said. "No way. Uh-uh. It's not possible."  
He looked down at himself and saw that he was, indeed, Hamlet. He shook his head in disbelief.  
"I'm not ready," he said desperately. "You gotta believe me. I don't know the lines! It's crazy to put me onstage now!"  
"Hey," Jennifer said, "the show must go on."  
She smiled, her cherubic face bright and cute and of absolutely no help at all at the moment. He was pushed onstage.  
"That's you cue," Jennifer said. "Remember, 'A little more than kin and less than kind'."  
He looked at her, confused, shook his head. The next moment he was onstage. The theater was packed. It looked like the whole town had shown up for the performance. He could see his parents, all his friends, all their parents. And, in the back, Ms. E. She looked at him, daggers in her eyes. Everyone waited for him to speak, all of them leaning forward, expecting him to act.  
"Uh..." Stanley said, "A little more than kin and less than kind?"  
Everyone winced at his delivery. It was embarrassing. The other actors onstage looked at him, horrified. After a moment, they continued and it wasn't long till Stanley was required to speak again. Again, everyone waited for him to speak.  
"Um," he said. "To or not to be, that is the question?"  
The young actress playing Gertrude actually fainted, right onstage. Stanley started to nervously chew his nails, sweating. He could feel all eyes on him. Everything depended on him.  
"No!" Ms. E said from the audience.  
She walked the aisle, coming through the audience, towards the stage. Stanley backed away, terrified of her, mortified by the embarrassment of it all. How would he be able to show his face anywhere after tonight? After he screwed up so?  
Stanley backed right into the scrim at the back of the stage. Almost immediately, he disappeared into it, tangling up in it. After a moment, he managed to break free of the scrim and looked out into the audience again.  
Everything had changed. Now, the theater was much more elaborate, with a mezzanine and a full balcony, private booths, opera seating. Everyone in the audience was in formal attire, immaculate, cultivated. He saw Gale and Tiffany in the audience. Gale was wearing a smart suit and Tiffany was decked out in a beautiful dress. They were clearly enjoying themselves: Gale's hand was up Tiffany's dress. Stanley looked around onstage and saw that the actors were now all adults.  
And all women.  
He recognized them. There was Erica Boyer, dressed up like Claudius. There was Barbara Dare playing Ophelia. There was Cristy Canyon, busting out of her costume, playing Gertrude. Traci Lords camped it up as Laertes. Lois Ayers sizzled as Horatio. A blast from the past - Brooke and Taylor Young played Rosencrantz and Guildenstern! Annette Haven was a smoldering Polonious, something Stanley never thought Polonious could be. And, finally, Jeanna Fine played a blonde, punked-up Hamlet.  
All of his favorite porn stars, here together. Stanley had always rather liked Hamlet but this was definitely the best Hamlet ever! All of Shakespeare's dialogue was there - delivered unevenly, it must be said: many of the porn stars were good but some, like Lords, Dare and the Young Twins, couldn't quite make it work - but supplemented with live onstage sex. Who could ask for more?  
But who was he playing?  
A hand grabbed him from offstage and pulled him into the curtains. Stanley couldn't see the figure, only his hands, one of them capped with a razored glove. The hands emerged from the curtains, gesticulated at him.  
"You're late for your fitting!" a voice said.  
It was Freddy.  
"My..." Stanley said, "my fitting?"  
"You need to get into character," Freddy said.  
"But who am I playing?"  
"Yorick, of course!"  
"But Yorick...he's just a skull!"  
"Yeah, you're gonna need some time in the make-up chair, I think. But, tell you what, we don't have time for that. So I'll just improvise!"  
He emerged from the curtains, cruelly laughing, razors first. Stanley screamed.  
The bell rang and he was jolted awake. He looked around. He was sitting at a desk in Science class. He didn't even have Theater today.  
"Jesus," he said.

3

Mid-day, between classes, Ann caught up with Riley, stopped him in a hallway connecting to the main locker area. They both looked like they were barely making it through the day. Ann had spent all of Study Hall trying not to nod off.  
"Hey," she said.  
"Hey yourself," Riley said.  
"Making it through the day?"  
"Somewhat."  
"Look," Ann said, "I've been going over and going over this in head, again and again and I just don't know any other way to approach than just going for it."  
"What are you talking about?" Riley said.  
"It shouldn't come as any surprise to you that I...I like you."  
"Well, I like you, too. No one else can keep up with me."  
"That's not what I mean."  
"Then what do you mean?"  
She pushed him up against the wall - no mean feat considering how big he was - and kissed him. It was quite a kiss, a mixture of passion and awkwardness. One moment, Riley was fighting it, the next he was completely into it. Ann had to stand on her toes to reach his height.  
The kiss finally broke and Riley just looked at her, confused. Ann looked at him wistfully. Riley shook his head.  
"I..." he said. "I thought you were a dyke."  
"What?" Ann said.  
"This feels wrong."  
"No, it's perfectly right."  
"What are you saying?"  
"Don't you see? We're dead, Riley. If Freddy doesn't kill all of us, we'll all be going up in a big fucking explosion, high as the sky. We'll be wiped out! So who cares?! Give me a chance. All I want to do is feel. Don't you?"  
Riley shook his head again.  
"No," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm gonna make it through this. So are you. We'll talk about this after this all blows over. See you around."  
He pushed her out of the way and walked off. Ann took a step towards him.  
"Riley," she called after him. "Riley! I love you!"  
But he was gone.

4

Riley was in the restroom during his next class. He had managed to stay awake all this time. Phys Ed was next and he wondered whether he would be able to make it through that. Ann had floored him with that kiss and he didn't know how to handle her. She was an attractive girl but he didn't feel for her in that way. She wasn't the one for him.  
He stood at the sink, looking at the mirror. He didn't like what he saw. There were bags under his eyes. They looked like deep, dark pockets.  
"Riley," a voice called.  
It sounded like a woman. Riley turned around, trying to find the source of the voice. One of the stalls behind him was open just a crack. And there was an eye peeking out of it.  
"Who's that?" Riley said.  
The stall door opened, revealing Jill. She nodded to him.  
"What the fuck you doing in here?" Riley said.  
"I had to talk to you," Jill said. "I've made a better plan."  
"And it couldn't wait?"  
"No, it couldn't."  
"All right, well spit it out."  
"Come into the stall with me."  
"What?"  
"Come on."  
"Are you out of your mind? I can see the headline now: Black man caught with white girl in high school bathroom stall."  
"It'll only take a minute," Jill said. "Nobody will find out."  
She retreated into the stall, closed the door behind her. Riley sighed and followed her.  
"I must be out of my mind," he said.  
He opened the stall door and entered the small space. Only it wasn't small anymore.  
It was a large room, red drapes and finery all around. A beautiful, no-doubt expensive, bed sat in the direct middle of it. And sprawled artfully on the bed was Jill. She was naked and everything that he had hoped she would be.  
"Ah, sweet Jesus," he said.  
"Come on, Riley," Jill said, "show me what a real man is like."  
Riley didn't stop to think, didn't pause to consider. He simply approached the bed - approached her - undressing as he came.  
"Yeah," Jill said. "That's it. Come on. I want to see it. Show it to me."  
Riley dropped his pants and underwear just as he reached the bed. She spurred him on and he climbed onto the bed with her, between her legs. They were face to face and she was gorgeous, one of the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen in his short life. She was ready. He was ready.  
Then he had a problem.  
"Come on," Jill encouraged him. "What's the matter?"  
"I..." Riley said. "I'm nervous, that's all."  
"Nervous?! Why?"  
"Well, I've always found you incredibly beautiful, Jill. I just..."  
"Come on, fuck me already!"  
"Yeah, Riley," a voice said, "what's the matter?"  
Riley rolled off Jill, looked for the source of the voice. He soon found it: a shadow moved across the red drapes: no form, no substance, just shadow. But Riley knew who the shadow belonged to.  
"Freddy," he said.  
"Can't get it up, can ya?" Freddy said.  
"Show yourself, Krueger."  
"I thought you brothers had huge, swinging poles between your legs but look at you."  
Jill laughed next to him, covering her mouth in embarrassment. She looked at him with what appeared to be pity.  
"Shut up," he said. "Just shut the fuck up!"  
"Oh, I think we've hit a nerve, don't you, Jill?" Freddy said.  
His shadow moved again, crawling around the bed and coming to rest on the drapes directly behind the bed, above the headboard. Jill nodded in answer to his question. Riley, beyond frustrated, hit the pillow next to her head. She didn't blink.  
"This is my dream," Riley said. "And I can do what I damn well please. Now I want you gone. Hear? Gone!"  
Freddy's shadow slowly crept down the curtain above the headboard as both he and Jill laughed. Soon, the shadow was gone entirely, leaving only his laughter behind.  
"I told you to shut up!" Riley said but Jill wouldn't stop laughing.  
He grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her. But she didn't stop laughing. She looked manic, crazy, her eyes bugging out, her mouth extended wider than what seemed possible.  
"What the fuck?!" Riley said. "Shut up!"  
Her skin wrinkled, severely. It now looked burned. Riley felt the cuts before he saw them. There were four of them, in his abdomen, just above his pubic bone. He looked down, saw Jill's hand - razored glove covering it - stuck halfway into him. He looked back up at her. She laughed and transformed into Freddy right in front of him.  
"Fuck you," Riley managed.  
"You first," Freddy said.  
And pushed his hand all the way inside. Riley gasped in pain as the arm traveled up his chest cavity and into his throat. The edges of the blades poked holes in his skin, blood erupting all over the place. When Freddy had hold of what he was looking for - Riley's tongue - he ripped his hand out of the young man, taking the tongue with him.  
Riley gurgled a few times and died. Freddy laughed and pushed his dead body off the bed. Then got up and threw the tongue onto his chest.  
In the real world, Riley fell down in one of the bathroom stalls, his wounds from the dream very much still in evidence. The next student who came into the bathroom had a nasty shock.

5

The school was locked down for several hours. Police were called in. They canvased the area, looking for the murderer, looking for even a murder weapon.  
They found nothing.  
The students were kept in their classrooms, told only that an incident had occurred. But the word got around. Riley Reynolds had been murdered in one of the school bathrooms. Jill, Gale, Eric and Stanley were shaken to the very core. Ann had gone almost catatonic. Time was running short.  
Once the police were done, they let the students go home. There wouldn't be anymore school today. Or the next day. For most of them, those who hadn't known Riley, it was the beginning of a long weekend.  
For Jill, Gale, Eric, Stanley, Ann and Tiffany, it was the beginning of the end.

6

When Jill got home, the phone was already ringing. It was Tiffany. She had heard about what happened at school - had talked to Gale about it. They discussed it and also discussed her situation. They decided that they might be able to convince Jill's father to take her in, at least temporarily, until a foster home could be secured. It was a good idea: they could use her father's nose for a story to tempt him into accepting. They hung up after deciding on an approach for this plan.  
Jill was about to leave the kitchen for her room when the phone rang again. She frowned, answered it.  
"What'd you forget, Tiffany?" Jill said.  
"Who's Tiffany?" Dr. Saunders answered.  
"What's up, doc?" Jill said.  
"That's not funny," Dr. Saunders said.  
"It's kinda funny."  
"I disagree."  
"That's great, doc. What do you want?"  
"I want to help you. I've always wanted to help you."  
"Yeah, but you haven't been very good at that, lately, have you, doc?"  
"No, I suppose I haven't."  
"So what do want? Really."  
"I've ordered a shipment of Hypnocil."  
"What?"  
"Hypnocil. It's the experiment drug I mentioned to you in our last session."  
"I know what it is. You got some?"  
"Yes. I'm ready to prescribe some for you. We just need to plan the next session."  
"Of course," Jill said.  
"When would be a good time for you?" Dr. Saunders asked.  
"Um, I'm not sure. Let me call you back. Maybe tomorrow?"  
"All right. I'll await your call."  
They disconnected. Jill stood next to the phone for a moment, drumming her hands on the counter. A plan started to form in her mind.

7

Dr. Saunders put down the phone, stroked it with one longing finger. She stared at it a moment longer before heading over to a locked cabinet she kept in her office, off, away from the patients.  
Unlocking it, she opened it, looked inside. There were seven bottles of Hypnocil inside the cabinet, all neatly arranged on one small shelf. But this was not what Dr. Saunders had opened the cabinet to examine.  
No, what she was interested in was higher up in the cabinet, on a larger shelf, one she kept neatly dusted. It was a place reserved for something special.  
On the shelf was Freddy's glove, the same glove stolen from a pawn shop the previous week.


	8. Blast From The Past

1

Jill, Gale, Eric and Tiffany sat up in Jill's room. Gale and Tiffany sat on Jill's bed, while Jill sat in her chair by the desk and Eric paced around the room. Jill had talked her father into temporarily taking Tiffany in: they had been right, he was fishing for a story, a scoop. The paperwork had been signed less than an hour ago. Stanley had been forced to stay home with his parents. What with all the deaths, they were worried about him and a little more than paranoid. No one had been able to get a hold of Ann.  
"So we have Hypnocil," Jill said.  
"Where?" Gale said.  
"My therapist ordered it. She's willing to write me a prescription for some. I think we should just take it, though. I've been in her building enough. It shouldn't be too difficult to sneak everybody in. In the evening, security's pretty lax."  
"Even if we get the stuff," Eric said, "I still don't know if your plan's going to work."  
"Then what do you suggest?" Tiffany said.  
"I don't know."  
"Nice counter," Gale said.  
"Look, it might work," he continued, "if we all skipped town or something. Remove ourselves from Freddy's sphere of influence."  
"That's what you've always wanted, isn't it?" Jill said. "Just take off. Leave everybody else behind. You've always hated this town and now you've come up with a reason to leave it and you've latched onto it."  
"And is that so bad?" Eric said. "This shitty one-horse town is gonna be the death of us all. And because it's literal now instead of just figurative, that only makes me want to leave that much sooner."  
"If we left," Gale said. Jill looked at her in shock. "If..." Gale continued. "We'd have to create new identities for ourselves. Tiffany isn't eighteen, like the rest of us, so she would definitely need one. The rest of us, too, really, because people would be looking for us. Police, parents."  
"I can't believe I'm actually discussing this," Jill sighed. "Maria. My dealer. She can get us new IDs, passports, whatever we need. She has connections."  
"There you go," Eric said.  
"But I don't think we should jump into this," Jill said. "This is last-resort sort of stuff."  
"Is this not last resort, Jill?" Eric said. "We're dropping off like flies here. Any time one of us goes to sleep, it could be our last."  
"You think I don't know that? Bobby was my boyfriend."  
"Yeah, and he was my best friend!"  
Mr. Snyder knocked on Jill's door, opened it, peeked his head in. He looked at everyone in the room.  
"No fighting, okay guys?" he said. "I know you've all been through a lot here. I get that, I understand. But play nice, okay? Look, I want you two, Gale and Eric, out of here in a few minutes, okay? You should all be getting an early night tonight. That okay?"  
Eric rubbed his eyes and face. He looked at Jill's father.  
"Yeah," he said. "I get it."  
"Sure," Gale said.  
"Okay," Mr. Snyder said.  
He left, closing the door behind him. Eric turned back towards Jill and the others.  
"I think we need to pursue this," he said. "Call Maria. I'll call Stanley, tell him what's going on."  
"All right," Jill said. "All right. We'll at least see if this is possible."  
"Right. Gale, Tiffany?"  
Gale nodded.  
"Yeah," Tiffany said.  
Eric said his goodbyes while Gale and Tiffany kissed. Soon, Gale and Eric were gone, leaving only Jill and Tiffany. Jill had prepared the spare room for the girl but she expected that she would be spending most of the night in here, trying to avoid sleep.  
"You want out of here, too, don't you?" Jill said.  
"Yeah," Tiffany said. "My dad's dead. I don't have any other family here so, basically, I'll go wherever Gale goes. She's all I have left."  
Jill nodded. A tear trickled down her cheek.  
"I understand," she said.  
"I didn't mean to upset you," Tiffany said. "You're thinking about Bobby. I'm sorry."  
Jill shook her head. She wiped away her tears, regained her composure.  
"No," she said. "Look at me. All I've lost is a boyfriend. You've lost a father."  
"He wasn't much of a father," Tiffany said. "Asshole, really."  
Jill laughed then stopped herself. She covered her mouth.  
"Sorry," she said. "That was uncalled for."  
But Tiffany was laughing, too. Soon, both of them were laughing. It was hard to stop.

2

Several hours later - full dark out - all of them except Stanley - and, of course, Ann - had successfully snuck out. Stanley's house was like a fortress and his mother kept the key under guard most of the time.  
They met at Maria's house - 1419 Elm - all of them showing up within a space of a few minutes. They all, in turn, looked at the House across the street: 1428 Elm. There it was, always there, a ruin, a testament to Evil, in its many forms. A haunted house, still reaching out to the young minds of the neighborhood, especially in those Hellish hours of the night where sleep should come but sometimes didn't and every shadow was a monster.  
"I'm gonna stay out here," Eric said.  
"What?" Gale said.  
"What are you talking about?" Jill said.  
"You don't need me in there," Eric said.  
"We can always use you," Jill said.  
"Look, you know that I don't like that you use this shit. So, stands to reason, I don't like your dealer. Yeah, she's sexy. Yeah, she makes great cookies, but so what? I don't like her. So, I'm staying out here. Okay?"  
"Okay," Jill said reluctantly.  
"Be careful," Gale said.  
"Thanks, mom."  
Jill led the way to the front door, knocked. A few moments went by. Jill knocked again. Finally, they heard the sound of locks being undone from inside the house.  
The door opened just a crack, a chain slashing across Maria's troubled eyes as she looked out. There was fear in her voice when she spoke.  
"What do you want?" she said.  
"Maria?" Jill said. "It's me, Jill. I called ahead."  
"Oh, yes. I suppose you can come in."  
The door closed again and they heard the chain being unlatched. Then the door opened again, revealing Maria. Jill suppressed a gasp. It looked as if Maria had aged about ten years since the last time she had seen her, which had only been a few days ago. Of course, Jill reflected, we all must look about the same.  
Maria's eyes had a deep, sunken look. Her skin was pallid, unhealthy-looking. Her gaze darted all around, paranoid and skittish. When she spoke, she sounded unsure of herself.  
"Please," she said, "come in."  
She turned and headed into the house. The others followed her. The house was a complete mess. Newspaper clippings were stapled to every wall, all of them hanging at odd angles. Half-eaten food sat everywhere. Roaches scattered when threatened by an invading foot. Jill saw empty bags lying around, white powder residue in all of them: coke, Maria's way of staying awake.  
As they entered the dining room, Tiffany saw it first: high above them, tied to the second-floor landing, a noose hung, neatly knotted thirteen times. She pointed it out to the others. Jill's eyes widened. What the Hell had they walked into?  
"Maria," she asked, "you okay?"  
"No," Maria said.  
She sat down at the dining room table, head in her hands. Jill sat down next to her. Gale stopped at one of the newspaper clippings, put out a hand to stop Tiffany. When she had the girl's attention, she pointed to the headline:  
MAN SUSPECTED OF CHILD MURDERS DISAPPEARS  
The article went on to describe how Fred Krueger, the man almost certainly responsible for the murders of at least twenty children in the neighborhood, had been arrested but, during trial, was set free due to a technicality. Shortly after, he had disappeared. The article stressed that Krueger had probably simply skipped town but there was an underlying subtext that seemed to indicate that the writer of the article knew what had actually happened to the man.  
"Jesus," Tiffany said and pointed at the byline:  
BILL SNYDER  
Jill's father. The two of them shared a look before joining Jill and Maria at the dining room table. Jill was already speaking to Maria.  
"Well, like I said over the phone," Jill said. "We're looking for fake IDs, good ones. Maybe passports, too."  
"Why would anyone want fake IDs?" Maria said.  
"Um... Well, it's really our business. But can you do it?"  
"I... I guess I could."  
She lapsed into silence. Jill tried to prompt her.  
"Money?" she said.  
"What?" Maria said. "Oh, money. Whatever you think is the right amount."  
"I don't think that's the way all this works."  
"Jill," Tiffany said, "she's lost it. She's out of it. Probably doesn't even know what you're saying."  
"I just need sleep," Maria said. "If I sleep, everything will be okay. But I can't sleep."  
She collapsed on the table, completely breaking down into tears. Jill tried to comfort her but the moment she touched her, Maria stood up from the table, violently, backed away from them.  
"Don't touch me," she said.  
"Okay," Jill said. "It's okay. I won't touch you."  
"You're his daughter."  
"Whose daughter?"  
"Him. Snyder. He was one of them, you know?"  
"No," Gale said, "we don't know. Who was he?"  
"One of the ones who killed him," Maria said.  
"Killed who?" Tiffany said.  
"My dad hasn't killed anything in his life," Jill said. "He wouldn't hurt a fly."  
Maria shook her head, confused. She walked out of the dining room and into the kitchen. An army of cockroaches beat a path for her as she moved. Jill and the others followed her.  
In the kitchen, Maria poured herself a cup of coffee, took a long drink. Jill looked past her, into the little supply room. It was open. As was the safe inside it.  
"None of you will survive anyway," Maria said. "He'll get all of you. He always does."  
"Who?" Jill asked, already knowing the answer.  
"Freddy," Maria whispered. "He can hear us. Awake, asleep, it doesn't matter. He's like fucking Santa Claus!" She laughed: there was no humor in it. "We know that he sees us when we're sleeping, so he must see us when we're awake. It all makes sense to me now. There's nothing we can do."  
"Is that why you made the noose?" Tiffany asked.  
Maria looked at her, disgusted.  
"I wasn't the one who made the noose," she said.  
She walked past them, into the dining room once again. She didn't stop there, though, but started up the stairs to the second floor landing. She spoke as she went. The others stayed downstairs, watching her as she went.  
"It was your parents!" she said. "Yours and mine. Our parents killed him. They tracked him to the old boiler room where he took the kids. And they burned it down, burned him down. That's why he looks the way he does! They thought he was through, finished! But he came back. Through their children's dreams. Through my dreams!"  
"Maria," Jill said, "come down from there. There's no need to do anything rash. We can beat him, I know it!"  
"You don't know anything. Did you know that Drake and Steph were killed last night? Yeah, I can see by your expressions that you didn't. Yeah, Freddy got both of them. Hit 'em with a train, the deadbeats. What are your deaths going to look like? Will they look like suicides or will they look just like what they really are: murders?"  
"We can beat him!" Jill insisted. "I have a plan. Now come down."  
Maria shook her head, defeated. She laughed, another humorless cackle.  
"How can you beat him?" she said. "You don't even know that I'm already asleep. I've been sleepwalking since I started coming up these stairs!"  
"What?" Gale said.  
"He led me up here. And now he's standing right behind me," Maria said.  
None of them saw the noose move. One moment it was still hanging there, above them, the next it was around Maria's neck, pulled tight.  
Then she was pushed.  
None of them saw who pushed her - it was some kind of invisible force - but there was no doubt that she was pushed: she didn't jump. She didn't scream on the way down, resigned to her fate. She tumbled for a moment before gravity caught up with her and the noose snapped her back. There was a hideous crack as her neck broke. Tiffany screamed and buried her face in Gale's breast. Jill only looked on, shocked.  
Maria's body swung - dead - above them, her feet just above their heads. She twitched - horribly - one leg spasming over and over again. Jill, Gale and Tiffany didn't have the first clue about what to do next.

3

Shortly after the others went inside Maria's house, Eric found himself staring at the House across the street. House with a capital "H". It had earned that capital letter. Eric thought about the stories he had heard. About how Jesse Walsh had skinned his younger sister alive and hung her, upside down, from the second-floor landing. About how he had cooked and eaten his father. About how he had removed all of his mother's internal organs and replaced them with dead ravens.  
He had no idea how many of these stories were true, and how many of them were so much of the kind of bullshit that kids make up to scare each other. But it was incredible how fast these stories spread. It was only a few months ago that the bodies had been discovered, the details held by the authorities so as not to cause panic among the lesser people.  
"What the Hell?" Eric said.  
The door to the House was standing open. It hadn't been open. Just a moment before, it had been shut, he was sure of it. Now it was open like the horrible maw of some kind of vast beast.  
And there was a little girl standing in the doorway. She was looking at him.  
Eric walked towards the House, not exactly sure why. It all seemed to make sense: go find out if the little girl was okay. As he approached, the little girl disappeared deeper into the House.  
"Hey, wait," Eric called after her.  
He ran towards her, rapidly closing the gap between himself and the House. In mere seconds, he had mounted the steps and entered the threshold. Once he stepped into the House, the door closed behind him, sealing him inside.  
"Fuck," he said.  
Inside, the House seemed even more like a living thing than on the outside. Everything was rotted, leaking. An unnatural wind swirled leaves everywhere. There was an eerie, echoing sound that Eric couldn't identify. It seemed to come from every direction.  
Eric, knowing that he was in a dream, looked everywhere he could for the Dream Pool. It was dangerous, he knew. Freddy could be anywhere.  
He opened a door, gasped, put a hand over his mouth. It was a room full of snakes. They were everywhere, slithering, writhing, all over each other. They covered the entire floor of the room. Several of them slithered towards him and he slammed the door shut as hard as he could.  
Desperately, he whirled around, and yelped at what he saw. The hallway he had been walking through was now filled with nooses. He could see at least fifteen of them hanging from the ceiling. They were all at varying lengths, one tied way up near the ceiling, one hanging so far down that it was practically touching the ground, the rest somewhere in between.  
Eric navigated a mad, zigzag pathway through the nooses and down the hall. Somewhere, metal scraped against metal; Eric could hear it and it hurt his ears. There were cobwebs all around. They were impossibly large, almost artificial. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought that someone had been decorating for Halloween.  
Dead leaves blew in every direction, like a dust devil loose in the House. If the House was a living thing and its walls and pillars were its bones, then where was he? In its guts, he imagined; or perhaps in one of its veins. Guts seemed more appropriate: it would digest him soon enough.  
The House was impossibly large inside, bigger than it was on the outside. Corridors and hallways stretched out for what seemed like miles. The staircase leading to the second floor elongated up into the heavens: Eric could see clouds swirling up there, near the door to Jesse's - and Nancy's, he imagined - old room.  
Something - or someone - cried out. The sound was right near Eric, practically on top of him. The cry was joined by another, then another. Soon, a chorus of voices cried out in pain but Eric couldn't see where the sounds were coming from. Then he saw them.  
The walls of the hallway were covered, on both sides, with screaming faces. Children and teenagers, their faces emerging from the wallpaper like mounted candles, screaming and writhing in pain.  
Eric dropped to the floor, both hands covering his ears in pain. It was too much. There was too much pain in the air. It was like he could feel all of them, feel all their pain and suffering. And he knew who they were, of course.  
These were all the dead kids. All the ones Krueger had murdered.  
He was using them against Eric.  
Eric felt wet carpet on his knees and he opened his eyes. The carpet was soaked with water. Desperately, he searched for the source of the water, found it: it was coming from under one of the doors. He couldn't do more than crawl towards the door but he managed it. With a mighty effort, he reached up - through the screams, which seemed like a real, physical barrier in the atmosphere - and opened the door.  
And the Dream Pool fell on him, crashed down on him like a wave.  
All at once, everything changed. He was in a basement, sitting on the stairs. The basement was filled with the kind of junk that usually collects in basements: old toys, boxes, discarded electronics that haven't worked in years, a huge, old, white refrigerator that nearly reached the ceiling, looking down on the two people in the basement.  
One was a grown man, a drunk, Eric could tell. He wore ratty clothes and an old baseball cap. His hair was black, longish and unkempt under the black cap. His eyes were sunken and mean. With a long leather strap, probably an old belt, he beat the second person in the basement: a young boy with reddish hair.  
To Eric, the boy looked like a younger version of himself but he knew that wasn't the case. The grown man wasn't his late father and the boy didn't look too much like himself: this was confirmed when he got a better look at the boy's face when he moved. So who was this?  
"You like taking your medicine, boy?" the man asked.  
The boy burbled in pain.  
"Speak up, Freddy," the man said.  
Eric couldn't believe it. This was Fred Krueger, as a boy. It was a glimpse of Freddy's past. Somehow, the Dream Pool had brought him here; had wanted him to see this. But why?  
Eric shook his head in disbelief and shifted his position on the stairs. His foot hit an old can sitting on a step and it fell over, rolled down the stairs. The two figures in the basement stopped, looked around at the sound.  
Looked around at him.  
All at once, they began to change: the man into a hunchbacked beast, the boy growing older, his skin molting and taking on a burned look. He was becoming the Freddy of Eric's nightmares.  
Freddy, his grown self once again, produced his hat from out of nowhere and put it on his head. He casually slit the throat of the hulking, hunchbacked beast. The beast writhed in pain, blood spraying from its neck. Soon, it collapsed to the ground, dead. Krueger smiled, looked at Eric.  
"So," he said, "how did you get in here?"  
He approached Eric, razored fingers leading the way.

4

"We better go and get Eric," Jill said.  
"Yeah," Gale said, distracted, still looking up at Maria's body. "Yeah, we better."  
"Come on," Tiffany said.  
The three of them made their way towards the front door, Tiffany walking hand in hand with Gale, their fingers entwined. They reached the door and stepped out into the chilly night air. A cold wind swept up a tangle of dead leaves, which swirled around the three of them.  
"Eric!" Jill said.  
She bolted towards Gale's car, where Eric was sitting back, clearly asleep. He was shaking, spasming, but his eyelids were closed, eyes moving rapidly back and forth under them. Jill grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. It was no good.  
Eric started to gurgle. Blood dribbled from his lips, hacked out from the back of his throat.  
"Oh, Jesus," Jill said.  
Gale jumped into the car, right next to Eric. Jill gave her some room to see if she could do anything about it. Gale slapped him across the cheek. Nothing. She sighed.  
"Forgive me, man," she said.  
And she reached between his legs and grabbed hold of his balls. Tight. Harsh. Eric's eyes snapped open and he gasped and immediately doubled over in pain, cradling his balls.  
"Oh, fuck," he said. "Jesus ass-fucking Christ."  
"Sorry," Gale said.  
Eric shook his head, still in a righteous amount of pain but with what appeared to be - under the circumstances, anyway - a satisfied look on his face. He leaned against Gale.  
"It's okay," he said. "Fuck. I was about to die in there. Son of bitch had his hand down my throat. The non-razored one, thankfully. Thought I was a goner."  
They gave him a few moments to recover before telling him about what had happened in the house. He shook his head.  
"Shame," he said.  
"Yeah," Jill said.  
Then he articulated what they were all thinking but wouldn't bring up:  
"So what about the money?" he said.

5

"I don't know if this is right," Tiffany said.  
They were back in the kitchen. Or, to be more precise, they were in the little room behind the kitchen. Jill and Eric were loading money out of Maria's open safe stashed in the back of the little room and into two big duffle bags they had found. Gale half-helped, half-disapproved. Tiffany stood outside the room entirely, arms folded across her ample bosom.  
"Of course it's not right," Eric said. "Nothing about any of this is right. But we might need this money."  
"Right," Jill said. "The cops are all corrupt in this town anyway. We know that now. They'd just take it for themselves. So why not us?"  
"It just seems callous," Tiffany said. "Thoughtless."  
"It's the opposite of thoughtless," Eric said. "This is our ticket out! With this kind of money, we can skip town, lay low for a while, let everything blow over and afford some good, convincing fake IDs."  
"You shits," Tiffany said.  
She turned away, walked out of the kitchen. Gale put a hand on Jill's shoulder.  
"I'll be back," she said.  
She left to follow Tiffany, finding her leaning against a wall in a hallway off the kitchen. A newspaper clipping stapled to the wall by her head spoke of Freddy's arrest. A picture of Donald Thompson illustrated the article.  
"Hey," Gale said.  
"Hey," Tiffany said.  
Gale leaned against the wall next to Tiffany. They were silent for a few moments, both of them just reflecting on the Hellish nights their lives had become.  
"They're right, you know," Gale finally said.  
"I know they are," Tiffany said.  
"But it pisses you off anyway."  
"Yeah."  
"I get it."  
"The fuck you do."  
"No, I do. It's not right. But we're not normal people anymore. Not that we ever were, I guess. Laws, rules, we're outside of all that now. It's the only way we're gonna survive. And it ain't pretty. Unlike you."  
Tiffany smiled.  
"Shut up," she said.  
"No, really," Gale said. "You're one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen."  
"What about that Chris Gordon you were talking about the other night?"  
Gale shrugged.  
"Okay, she's a goddess," she said. "But who cares? I wouldn't have anything in common with her. Wouldn't have one thing to share with her. She's on Track. All about physical training, all that muscle shit. But you..." Gale shook her head. "You're everything I've ever dreamed about. I can't explain it."  
"Try," Tiffany said.  
"I dreamed about you."  
"Bullshit."  
"I did. It was a nightmare."  
"Figures."  
They both laughed. Gale rolled off the wall and put her arms around Tiffany.  
"I dreamed that I was watching this movie," she said. "But I was also in the movie. I was in this band. And you were in it. It's the craziest thing."  
"How is that possible?" Tiffany said.  
"It's not too weird. I've seen you around school. Just because we never shared a word before a few days ago doesn't mean I've never noticed you. It was just my subconscious' way of telling me what I really want. You."  
There were no more words. They kissed, made out, right there in the hallway, amidst the chaos and carnage throughout the house. None of it mattered. All that mattered was each other and the feel of each other's bodies rubbing up against one another.  
"Hey lovebirds," Eric said.  
He was leaning into the hallway, looking at them, a smile on his face. Gale and Tiffany broke their kiss but didn't disentangle their limbs. They looked at Eric.  
"What?" Gale said.  
"We're done in here," Eric said. "But we still got work to do. All of us."  
Gale sighed, shared another quick kiss with Tiffany, then the two of them left the hallway and got to work. They spent the next hour or so removing any trace of their presence in the house, wiping away fingerprints and the like. When they were done, they left and made an anonymous phone call to the police from a pay phone.  
They put the money in the trunk of Gale's car. She drove everyone home. When she was finally alone and heading back to her house, she reflected that it couldn't get much worse than the last two nights.  
It turned out that the next day was the worst yet to come.

6

"Honey," Ann's father - Gene - said. "Honey, are you there?"  
It took a long time for Ann to answer. She was sitting on the couch in their tiny living room. It was late but she was trying to stay awake. Her father stood over her, a glass of what was no doubt warm milk in his hand.  
"I'm here," Ann said.  
Her voice was flat, emotionless. She looked up at him, her movements slow and deliberate, like a robot in an old science fiction movie.  
"You need to sleep, baby," Gene said.  
Ann shook her head. Gene sighed, clearly frustrated.  
"Honey," he said, "I know you're upset. I know you had feeling for that ni... for that young man."  
Tears rolled down Ann's cheeks.  
"But you need sleep," Gene continued. "You just do. Now drink this. It'll help."  
"You don't understand, dad," Ann said. "If I sleep, I'm dead."  
"Don't talk that damn nonsense! It's bullshit and you know it. No one's coming for you in your dreams. You must see that! Your friend was probably murdered by someone who just didn't like him. Simple as that! Now go to fucking sleep!"  
Ann looked up at her father, face full of tears, wanting so much to go to sleep, half-crazy, and suddenly it all seemed so easy. She spoke:  
"Okay, dad," she said.  
"Good," Gene said.  
He handed her the glass of warm milk. Ann took it, stared at it for a moment. She shook her head, resigned, and downed the whole glass. Her father stared down at her, a satisfied smile on his face.  
"I love you, dad," Ann said. "Goodbye."  
"You mean, 'Goodnight,' honey," Gene said.  
"Right. Goodnight."  
He nodded sagely as Ann laid out on the couch, turned on her side and buried her head in the couch pillow. Sleep floated down onto her like a warm blanket and for a moment - just a moment - she felt safe, she felt relaxed, enjoying her rest.  
Then the nightmare began.  
She hit hard ground, like she had been dropped from several feet in the air. She looked around. She was in an alley. It looked like Springwood, but something was wrong. She wandered out of the alley, hands wrapped around her body. It was cold.  
The street she emerged onto to was trashed, debris everywhere, many buildings collapsed or half-gone. It had been harder to tell in the alley, since most alleys already look like shit but out here it was apparent. She had a sneaking suspicion of what had happened but didn't want it to be true.  
She passed by a shop window, its glass shattered. Inside, a television set crackled to life. A news anchor reported from a newsdesk. The man looked defeated, his eyes bordered with black circles.  
"We have confirmation," the news anchor said. "The USSR is behind the nuclear attacks on the US and its allies. The US military have responded in kind, wiping out Moscow, just as New York, DC and many other cities have been destroyed. The USSR's allies are retaliating at the moment and we expect... Jesus, this is the end."  
Ann put a fist to her mouth, bit down on it. She shook her head.  
"No," she said. "No, this is a dream. It isn't real. Oh, God, it isn't real. No, no, no!"  
She ran down the street, heading for the road out of town. She had to get out of here, had to see if anything had survived. But, most importantly, she had to leave Springwood. Maybe there was a life for her out there somewhere.  
A mile or so later, she came across a group of people. They looked like tramps, dirty and diseased. Only worse. Their faces were covered in boils and unidentifiable, pulsing red bumps. They coughed continually, spitting out mouthfuls of dark blood.  
"Out of my way," a tramp said behind Ann and pushed her aside.  
The tramp ran towards the group, pushed through them as well. They were all fighting for something on the ground.  
"It's mine!" one said.  
"Give it to me!" another said.  
"It belongs to me!" said a third.  
Ann pushed her way through the men, trying to get a better look at what they were fighting over. She suppressed a scream when she saw it.  
It was Freddy's glove.  
One tramp finally got hold of it, put it on. He immediately slashed the throat of the nearest man. The man went down, hands around his neck, blood spraying everywhere. The other tramps backed away from the victor.  
"I am your new God!" the triumphant tramp said. "Bow down and worship me!"  
Most of them did. The Tramp God killed those who didn't. He stuck the razored fingers through eyes, sliced off testicles, stabbed them into armpits, whatever horrible fancy came to his diseased mind.  
Then the Tramp God's gaze turned to Ann. He pointed with his gloved hand.  
"You," he said. "You are not one of my servants."  
"I..." Ann said.  
"You will be destroyed. Eat him."  
The other tramps, still on their knees, turned towards Ann, their faces mad, eyes wide, smiles hideous. They ran towards her on all fours like bugs or rats.  
The first one to get to Ann grabbed her by the leg and bit down on it. Ann screamed and kicked the man off. But there were more. Many more. They were on her and Ann found herself punching, kicking and elbowing them aside.  
She had to get out of here, had to escape. All of a sudden, she was no longer resigned, she wanted to live. But what could she do?  
The answer came to her in an instant. This was a dream. All of it. Why couldn't she do things that she couldn't do in real life? Like, for example, run faster than any human could. Like the Flash or something!  
She concentrated and her feet began to move, super fast, lightning fast. In an instant, she was away from the mob attacking her. They fell over in a tangle of limbs from the velocity of her sudden movement.  
She ran circles around them, toying with them. She laughed and laughed, having a Hell of a time.  
Then frowned.  
The Tramp God was now Freddy. And he was laughing: looking at Ann whenever she passed and laughing. Why? What did he know that Ann didn't?  
Ann shook her head. It didn't matter. She was out of here. She darted away from the mob of mutated monsters and ran down the street. There was a ramp set out in the middle of the road, as if placed there just for her. She picked up speed and mounted it.  
And, suddenly, she was airborne. It was magical. She floated high in the air, above Springwood. She smiled, satisfied. This was bliss. This was Heaven. Perhaps she could live in this dreamstate forever, changing it by her very will.  
That was when she saw it. It was flying high above her, coming towards her, rocket-powered.  
It was an ICBM missile. A nuclear missile.  
With red and green stripes.  
"Oh, shit," Ann said.  
She tried to avoid the missile but it changed course and hit her straight on. The tip of the missile impaled Ann in the stomach, coming out the other side of her. Ann's hands collapsed around the missile as it took her down to the ground, the G-forces racking her body. She coughed up blood.  
Ann clawed at the metal, found a panel. She managed to pry it open. Maybe she could get at the circuits and stop it, disarm it.  
She tore off the panel and threw it aside, where it caught air and glided off, tumbling end over end as it fell. Ann's face dropped.  
"Oh, God," she said. "Jesus Christ, no!"  
The panel had no circuits inside it. Only Freddy's smiling face, reconstructed in wires and circuits.  
"Mutually assured destruction," Freddy said. "Good idea, if you ask me!"  
He laughed as the missile hit its target: the Springwood High trackfield. The track, the sports building, the neighborhood, the town and Ann herself were all annihilated in the explosion, leaving behind only a brilliant, orange mushroom cloud, as high as the sky.


	9. Parents' Day

1

The next morning, Friday, Jill was already sitting at the kitchen table when her father came down for breakfast. Tiffany had agreed to stay up in her room for the time being, let Jill and her father have a real talk. Bill Snyder came downstairs and into the kitchen whistling.  
"Morning, honey," Mr. Snyder said. "What are you doing up so early? You've got the day off, remember?"  
"Yeah," Jill said, "I remember, Dad. One of my friends died."  
"Oh, I'm sorry. I... I didn't know that you were friends with Riley. How well did you know him?"  
"This isn't a story, Dad. You're not interviewing me."  
"I know. What's wrong?"  
"I haven't slept."  
"That's the worst thing you could do. Bad for your health."  
"I don't think you could sleep, either, if you'd gone through what I've gone through."  
"You have been through a lot and I'm sorry I haven't been around much lately."  
He turned away from her and opened the fridge, grabbed a few eggs and bacon. Breakfast was what was primarily on his mind, it seemed.  
"Dad," Jill said, "what do you know about Fred Krueger?"  
"Fred Krueger?" Mr. Snyder said, still not turning away from the preparations of his breakfast. "Haven't heard that name for a long time."  
"But you do know it?"  
"Well, of course I know it. He was a serial killer. Years ago."  
"What happened to him?"  
"He was let go. Technicality."  
"Then what?"  
Mr. Snyder shrugged, broke an egg in a hot frying pan, let it sizzle. The bacon was already sizzling in a pan next to it.  
"Skipped town, I guess," he said. "Too many angry parents."  
"Got that right," Jill said.  
"What does that mean?"  
"Means, Dad, that I don't think you're telling me the whole truth here."  
"I've got nothing to hide."  
"Dad, I'm not invisible! Look at me!"  
Mr. Snyder finally turned away from breakfast to look at Jill. Their gazes met and Mr. Snyder sat down at the table opposite his daughter.  
"What is it, dear?" he said.  
"Dad," Jill said, "did you kill him?"  
He was visibly shaken. He sat back in his chair, almost like he wanted to get away from her. He shook his head, rapped his knuckles on the table, a nervous tick.  
"That's ridiculous," he said.  
"That's bullshit, Dad!" Jill said.  
"Jill, dear, language!"  
"I'm eighteen years old, Dad, fuck language! Did you kill Fred Krueger?"  
"This is not you. It isn't. You're not like this."  
"Well, I am now, Dad. My friends are dying, one by one. And you know who's doing it, don't you? So tell me the truth, one adult to another."  
Mr. Snyder stood up again, paced the kitchen. Behind him, the bacon burned, the eggs turned green with the heat.  
"Yes," he said. "I killed him. Me and a whole lot of other parents on this street. We sent him to Hell."  
"Oh, fuck," Jill said, her head in her hands. "It's true. All true."  
"We did it for you. For you, the children who were still alive. And we did it for all the dead ones, Marty included."  
"Marty?"  
"You wouldn't remember him. You weren't even two years old. He...he was your older brother. Krueger killed him when he was six years old."  
"I had a brother?! I... What? I don't..."  
"So you see I had to do it. We all had to do it. Had to kill him!"  
Jill stood up from the table, walked out of the kitchen. Her father followed her. Jill called up the stairs.  
"Tiffany," she said, "we're leaving!"  
"Don't go, honey," her father said. "Stay with me. We have to talk about this."  
"We already have, Dad. All you and your fucking idiot friends did was make it worse! Don't you see? We're dying. We're all dying. All the kids of the parents who killed him!"  
Tiffany came down the stairs. She and Jill left, Mr. Snyder still in the house, tears in his eyes.

2

Stanley was a prisoner. There was no other word for it. His parents, their paranoia reaching a crescendo, had not let him out of the house since he left school the previous day. It was late afternoon on Friday now and Stanley was having an increasingly difficult time trying to stay awake. He had almost zero stimulation, only the house, his room, his bed. Today, in fact, his parents didn't even want him leaving his room. They brought meals up to him, accompanied him to the bathroom. It was insane. He lived for the phone calls he received from his friends. He was on the line with Eric at the moment, talking to him while pacing his room, getting tangled up in the long cord.  
"What could you have done about it?" Stanley said.  
"I don't know," Eric said on the other end of the line.  
"Well, there you go."  
"It's just, you know, I liked Steph."  
"But it's not like you knew her. You just thought she was some hot chick. And she was, I won't deny that, but she was just some girl. Not a friend."  
"Right," Eric said. "But...I felt like we had some kind of connection. If we had just gotten to know each other better..."  
"She was bad news," Stanley said. "I'm sorry but she was. Her and Drake. Both bad news kids. Mixed up in drugs, worse. Who knows what?"  
"Shit, I know. And...I just got word that Ann's dead, too."  
"What?!"  
"Yeah, she didn't make it through the night. Her father found her dead this morning. Supposed to be some kind of...horrible mess."  
"Jesus," Stanley said.  
"Yep," Eric said. "And her pops...he didn't waste anytime. Called the police...then put a snub-nosed pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger."  
"Shit."  
"Brains all over the kitchen walls. I hate this fucking town. But why focus on the negative? So what's goin' on with you? Parents still got you on lockdown?"  
"You know it, dude. Like a fuckin' prison here."  
"I don't know where the Hell my mom went. I stopped by her work, just wanted to talk to her, you know? Trying to fill time, trying to stay awake? Anyway, they tell me she left early. Some personal matter. But she's not home, either."  
"Maybe she's got a boyfriend," Stanley suggested.  
"Ah, don't say things like that," Eric said. "Make me gag here. Gross."  
"Just a theory. Not too far-fetched, is it?"  
"I guess not."  
"How's everyone else?"  
"I don't know. Everyone seems broken. Fractured. We're breaking apart, man. Jill only thinks about beating Freddy, Gale has Tiffany now and they're all over each other just about all the time."  
"Wow," Stanley said. "Sign me up. Damn, why I can't ever be around when they're doing each other?"  
"Calm down," Eric said. "It's not like I've walked in on them...fisting each other or anything like that."  
"If only..."  
"You crack me up, man. Really."  
"What about you?"  
"What?"  
"Gale has Tiffany on her arm, Jill has Freddy on the brain. What about you?"  
There was a pause on the other end of the line. If Stanley didn't know any better, he might have thought Eric had hung up. As it was, he could still hear his friend breathing lightly on the other end.  
"You didn't fall asleep, did you?" he asked.  
"No," Eric said.  
"Well?"  
"I just want to get the Hell out of here."  
"Out of the house? I know how you feel."  
"Out this fucking town. This place is gonna kill me."  
There was a knock on Stanley's bedroom door, saving him from answering. Which was good because he had no idea what how he was supposed to respond to Eric.  
"Hold on a minute," he said.  
He put the phone down, went to answer the door. He opened it to his mother, standing in the doorway like a prison guard.  
"Yeah?" he said.  
"Honey," she said, "we're having a few people over, so I want you to stay up here. And don't make a peep."  
"Shouldn't be too difficult."  
"Thanks, hon."  
She walked down the hall and Stanley closed the door behind her. He retrieved the phone.  
"Hey, you there?" he said.  
But the line was dead.

3

"What is going on?" Stanley said to himself.  
He stood at his bedroom window, looking down in the front of the house. This was the second car that had pulled up. The first had been driven by a woman he didn't know. She looked upper class, blonde and immaculately dressed. Now, in the second car, was Bill Snyder, Jill's dad. What was he doing here?  
He tried to call Jill, got no answer. As he was putting the phone down, he heard a third car pull up. He ran to the window just in time to see Gale's parents getting out of the car. Shortly after them came Eric's mom.  
This was too much. He grabbed the phone, started to dial Eric.  
And it was all suddenly too much.  
It hit him all at once: all of the deaths, his friends dying one by one. Now this. It was too much. He sat down on his bed, shaking his head.  
"No, no," he said. "I won't go to sleep. I won't! I..."  
He fell back, onto his bed. He was asleep instantly. The phone hung from its cord, dangling off the bed, the line unreachable now.

4

"Well, I don't give a damn who finds out," Bill Snyder said. "These are our kids here. It's our responsibility to protect them. Jesus Christ, doesn't that make sense to any of you?"  
They were all in the dining room. Everyone was sitting at the table with the exception of Elaine Parker and Bill himself. Bill couldn't help but stare at Elaine, hating every inch of her. Her blonde hair was immaculate and she was almost in formal wear, a black dress. She was probably planning on going out for a night on the town after this little meeting. She smoked like a chimney while they talked.  
"I'm just saying that this doesn't make any sense," Mrs. O'Connor, Gale's mother, said. "How could they know?"  
"I don't know," Bill said. "Maybe our kids are starting to remember something. Repressed memories. I've read about that."  
"Your kids," Elaine Parker said.  
"What?" Mr. Peters, Stanley's father, said.  
"This is all happening to your kids," Elaine explained. "Not my little angel. She's been sleeping fine."  
"But for how long, Elaine?" Bill said. "How long? The Reynolds kid is dead, the Doyle boy, the James boy, Bobby Garfield, Stephanie Baker. How are they connected? I think you damn well know."  
"I don't have to take this," Elaine said. "I don't even live on this nasty street anymore."  
"Yeah," Mrs. Peters said, "an insurance policy later and you're suddenly no longer a friend of mine."  
"Let's be honest, we were never friends."  
"How did your husband die again, Elaine?" Mrs. Tate, Eric's mother, asked.  
"Didn't anyone call Donald?" Elaine said, trying to change the subject.  
"Of course," Mrs. Peters said. "Lt. Thompson, former lieutenant, excuse me... He couldn't make it."  
"Of course he couldn't," Elaine said. "He's a drunk."  
"Look who's talking," Mr. Peters said.  
"I refuse to listen to any more of this garbage," Elaine said.  
She left the dining room and headed into the entryway. The front door was locked and she scrambled to find a lock to open it. It appeared to need a key.  
"Somebody let me out of this damn prison," she said.  
Mrs. Peters walked into the entryway. She looked sheepish.  
"Please reconsider," she said. "We could use your input."  
"Sounds like none of you want my input," Elaine said. "Now let me out."  
Mrs. Peters reached for her keys, in her pocket. She was flustered, disturbed by all their talk.  
"Come on!" Elaine prompted. "I don't want to stay in this place any longer than necessary. What's taking you so long?!"  
Finally, Mrs. Peters had the keys and unlocked the door for Elaine, who blew a mouthful of smoke at her while leaving. Mrs. Peters sighed, locked the door behind her and, without thinking about it, dropped the keys on the sidebar by the door. She returned to the dining room.  
"Who needs the bitch, anyway?" Bill said.  
"All right, all right," Mr. O'Conner said. "But what are you really trying to say here, Bill? That Freddy somehow isn't dead? That he's after our kids? That sounds crazy."  
"There's no way he's still alive," Bill said. "Donald and Blocker made sure of that. Fucker was nothing but charred bones. They hid his body somewhere. I don't where, so don't ask me."  
"Blocker died soon after, didn't he?" Mrs. Tate said.  
"Yes," Bill said. "Not long before your husband, in fact."  
"We're getting off track here," Mr. O'Connor said. "Bill, if you think Freddy's dead, then what are you really saying? That he's come back from the dead?"  
Bill sighed. He had been leaning against the wall and now got off it, approached the table.  
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe Freddy had an accomplice. Someone we didn't know about."  
"That's ridiculous," Mrs. O'Connor said. "We would have found out at some point."  
"Why?" Bill said. "Is that so far-fetched? So what do you think the answer is? They're all dreaming about Freddy. Does that mean that he's killing them through their dreams? Does that make any more sense?"  
"No," Mrs. O'Connor said.  
"But why our children," Mr. Peters said, "why not us?"  
"Because it hurts more," Mrs. Tate said.  
"Right," Bill said. "Plus, not all of us have escaped Freddy's grasp. Blocker, Marge Thompson, Elaine's husband, Kirk. Your husband, Mrs. Tate. And now Buford Violet and Gene Franklin."  
"Buford was an accident," Mr. Peters said. "He fell down the stairs while drunk, stabbed himself with a knife he was carrying. Gruesome, yes. Unexpected? Not at all. And Gene, well..."  
"Well, they practically all have been accidents," Bill said. "Death by misadventure. But what if they were staged? One of the cops who investigated Buford's death told me that the crime scene looked like it'd been staged."  
"Then why aren't they investigating it further?" Mrs. O'Connor said.  
"Don't have the manpower," Bill said. "Plus, they don't care. Nobody liked Buford. Hell, I didn't like Buford. He was a drunk. A mean one. I'm glad Tiffany's under my roof, for the time being, at least. I think he's been abusing her for years."  
"You're a saint for taking her in, Bill," Mrs. O'Connor said.  
"Yeah," Mr. Peters said, "a saint or just some guy looking for a scoop, am I right?"  
"That's unfounded!" Bill said. "That girl is sweet and innocent. Well, mostly innocent - as innocent as any seventeen year old can be. I'm just trying to protect her from whatever's going on around here."  
"That's the question, isn't it?" Mr. Peters said. "What is going on here?"  
"Someone's preparing a feast," Bill said. "And we're all on the menu."

5

Stanley popped a tape into the VCR and sat down in front of the television, excited as a kid on Christmas morning. It was a bright, cheery day. He could tell, even though his windows were shut. Birds chirped outside and the sun shown through the shutters in flat, powerful shafts projected onto the striped carpet of his bedroom floor.  
The tape booted up, white noise replaced with black, then the usual FBI warning. Then trailers. Oh, how Stanley loved trailers. Particularly porn trailers, they always showed the best parts, so he could decide to pursue a certain tape if it looked like it had a few good-looking scenes in it.  
But these were strange trailers. The usual sex scenes were supplemented with odd, scary scenes. They were the usual porn "serious" scenes, where the performers, both men and women, were trying to act, but there was always something lurking in the background of the scenes: scurrying creatures, piles of severed limbs, grinning, clutching madmen. None of the actors in any of these scenes ever remarked on the strange things, nor ever seemed to even see them. It was unsettling, to say the least.  
Finally, the movie began. Lois Ayers was wearing headphones and dancing like Tiffany, in a bedroom full of posters. Then a big man wearing a hockey mask came into her bedroom. She didn't see him, nor hear him, what with her headphones. The man carried a machete. He approached the starlet, raised the machete.  
"Watch out!" Stanley called out, as if she could hear him.  
Amazingly, she did.  
She whirled around, kicked the man in the balls. He doubled over and Lois ran around his enormous bulk and kicked him in the ass. Astonishingly, the stalker was catapulted through the bedroom window, where he fell to his death.  
Stanley cheered and Lois gave him a little bow, looking right out of the television screen. The music on the soundtrack got funkier, sexier, and Stanley got down to business as, onscreen, Lois welcomed Jeanna Fine into her room. They made out, undressed each other. Both girls had a similar look: blonde and punked-out. Almost as if they could be sisters. It added a dirty, naughty feel to the scene.  
In Stanley's room, the light streaming through the window changed color, from sun white to striped red and green. Stanley didn't notice, all of his attention focused on the screen. Strange sounds surrounded him: an odd clicking noise, the fluttering of insect wings, what sounded like an old, rusty iron door closing slowly.  
The girls onscreen stopped what they were doing and looked at Stanley, pointed at him. They laughed, eerily. Stanley looked around and saw them: Erica Boyer, Barbara Dare, Christy Canyon, Traci Lords. They surrounded him, actually in the room with him.  
Stanley gasped, delighted and scared at the same time. They looked like animated corpses: pale skin, dark eyeliner - their movements jerky, uneven. They were in all four corners of the room, staring at him. They tilted their heads side to side and approached him slowly.  
"Oh, Jesus," he said.  
The girls reached him, touched him, kissed him. On the television screen, Lois Ayers and Jeanna Fine made out with each other and watched him through the picture tube.  
The girls took turns sitting in his lap and kissing him, one after the other. Traci Lords was last and she took her time, rubbed her ass into his lap, pressed her body against him. She kissed him long and slow, but something about her bothered him. She lacked passion. When the kiss broke, she looked at him, stared at him, saying nothing. It was a little creepy and Stanley adjusted his position, trying to get her off him.  
The others grabbed hold of him, tightly. Stanley tried to make light of it, laughed a little.  
"Hey," he said, "I'm into the kinky stuff but this..."  
He trailed off. Traci opened her mouth. Wide. Impossibly wide. Her jaw extended like a python dislocating its jaw to swallow a rather large prey. A loud, inhuman wail escaped her maw. Stanley screamed.  
"I don't want this anymore," he babbled. "Please stop!"  
On the television screen, Lois and Jeanna laughed mercilessly, their hands exploring each other's nether regions. Stanley started to cry, massive tears streaming down his face.  
Traci's mouth was now monstrously stretched, at least two feet tall. There was a hideous chittering, scraping sound at the back of her throat - just under the wail - and something came crawling out of her mouth, scittering down her chin and neck, onto her chest.  
It was one of the VHS/roaches. Stanley didn't think he could scream any louder but he proved himself wrong. He could feel his vocal cords stretching, breaking. The VHS/roach crawled onto his own chest, traveled down his body.  
He looked around as more wails sounded around him. The other girls' mouths were also open impossibly wide and VHS/roaches crawled out of their throats, one after another, scuttling all over Stanley.  
The boy's eyes were fixed on Traci's wide open mouth. No other VHS/roaches had emerged from her mouth after the first. As he watched, a hand clad in a razored glove emerged from her mouth, clasping onto her lower jaw. A second hand - burned but no glove - appeared, grabbed hold of the girl's upper jaw.  
Freddy pushed apart the girl's head, climbed partway out of her. He wasn't wearing his hat but everything else about him was the same: the burned face, the horrible smile.  
"Women," he said. "Never can trust 'em, can you? Sorry, Stanley, this little opportunity is something I just can't pass up. Be back before you can scream. Oops, too late."  
He retreated back into Traci's body, leaving her upper head hanging down, flapping against the back of her neck. After a moment, another VHS/roach crawled out of the hole that used to be her head, but this one was different. It was striped red and green and a blinking eye was in the center of it, between the reels, where a sticker would normally be.  
The other girls grabbed him by his head while the VHS/roaches covered his body, preventing him from moving. Erica Boyer forced his lower jaw open while Barbara Dare pushed her fingers into his eyes and pulled his upper jaw up with the assistance of Christy Canyon. Soon, his mouth was forced open almost as wide as the girls.  
Stanley cried and tried to scream while the Freddy/roach crawled up his body, up his neck and into his open mouth. The moment it was inside, the girls let go of him and the VHS/roaches disappeared. There was the mechanical sound of a VCR accepting a VHS tape coming from inside his head. His eyes were momentarily clouded over with white noise, then snapped to black, a noise bar scrolling through them. Then there was a quick FBI warning before being replaced by a red and green striped pattern.  
Then Freddy's eyes replaced Stanley's own eyes. The boy smiled just like Freddy, then sneered.  
"Welcome to Freddy TV," he said and laughed.

6

"We just keep going around in circles," Bill said. "You people must see that something's going on here."  
They were still arguing, still arranged around the dining room table. All of them were wrapped up in the subject now, leaning into the table, closer to each other.  
"And?" Mr. Peters said.  
"And I don't understand why you don't want to do anything about it. Are you cowards? No, you can't be. Know how I know? Because you were all standing next to me while Thompson and Blocker lit that fucker on fire!"  
None of them saw Stanley walk by the doorway briefly. And, of course, they didn't see him pick up the keys on the sidebar by the front door. He passed by them once again, on his way to the basement. Once again, no one saw him. He was sleepwalking, most definitely not in control of his body anymore.  
In the basement, he threw the keys into the furnace. After that, he grabbed the can of kerosene in the corner of the room. He grabbed a lighter and started pouring kerosene around the basement, then headed up the stairs, spread it around the entire ground floor, continued up to the second, spread it around up there, too.  
After that, he headed downstairs to say hello to the parents.

7

"I say we drag Thompson out of whatever dive he's locked himself in," Bill said, "make him involved. Hell, he should understand. His daughter nearly died a few years ago and his wife did!"  
He slammed a hand down on the table. Mrs. Peters started. She looked around.  
And saw Stanley.  
He was standing in the doorway of the dining room, dumping some kind of liquid over his naked body. He had a horrible smile on his face.  
"Honey?" she said.  
Everyone looked at him. Mr. Peters stood up.  
"Jesus," Bill said.  
"Son," Mr. Peters said, "what is that you're...covered in?"  
"Kerosene," Stanley said, laughing. But he didn't speak in his own voice but in some other voice, deeper, meaner.  
In fact, he sounded just like Fred Krueger.  
"Oh, God," Mrs. Tate said.  
"I just couldn't resist," Freddy/Stanley said. "So many of you here, together, in one place. Sure, it's more satisfying to kill your kids but...this'll be fun, too."  
He laughed again, tossed the can of kerosene aside and raised the lighter. He made to strike it. Several of the parents made a move towards him.  
"Stop!" Mr. Peters said.  
"Please, God!" Mrs. Peters said.  
Bill nearly reached him. But he was too late. Freddy/Stanley struck the lighter.  
For one brief moment, just after the lighter was struck, nothing happened. Freddy/Stanley's eyes cleared and he was his old self again.  
"Mom?" he said. "Dad?"  
Then the flame of the lighter ignited the fumes kicked off by the kerosene and the boy went up like a Roman Candle. He screamed in horrible agony as the fire engulfed him and spread across the floor.  
Everything went chaotic.  
The fire spread quickly, in every direction: through the first floor, up to the second, down to the basement. Stanley collapsed to the ground, burning alive. The adults ran towards the front door but it was locked.  
The house was like a prison and there was no way out.  
Mrs. Peters dropped to her knees by her burning son, cradled him, setting herself ablaze. She screamed.  
Soon, everyone else was burning, too. The house went up in a raging inferno, the screams of the not-so-innocent heard down the whole street.  
And, somewhere, Freddy Krueger was still laughing.


	10. Freddy's "Accomplice"

1

In 1967, Dr. Saunders was simply Andrea Saunders, a student at the college in Springwood. She hadn't grown up in town, but in Cleveland and had taken a scholarship here at the college. On this particular night, she was in the medical college building, in the lab, leaning over a dead body. In her young twenties, she was beautiful, although her looks would only improve with age. Her red hair was tied back and she wore a pair of glasses that just added to her sexiness. Opposite her was another student, Wendy, a little more unkempt - frumpy - than Andrea.  
The dead body on the slab was a young man, practically in the prime of his life except for the fact that he was dead. Andrea opened up the Y-cut in his chest, explored the cavity with her scalpel.  
"Why are we here this late?" Wendy asked. "We should be home, asleep."  
"Sleep is for tortoises," Andrea said. "And if you don't get an A on that mid-term, there's no way you're going to keep your scholarship."  
Wendy sighed.  
"Right," she said. "It's just...spooky."  
"What's spooky?" Andrea said.  
"Being here, this late at night."  
"The lab?"  
"Yeah. And just...you know, out."  
Andrea stopped working, looked up at Wendy. She frowned.  
"What are you talking about?" she said.  
"Well, you know," Wendy said, "that killer. The Springwood Slasher."  
"You're actually worried about him?"  
"Well, sure, course!"  
"Wendy, he kills kids. We're college students. I don't think we have anything that he'd want, if you know what I mean."  
"I just don't like being out is all. Come on, let's go back to the dorm room, get high and go to sleep."  
"Man, this guy must have smoked about seven packs a day," Andrea said, rummaging through the corpse's chest.  
"Are you even listening to me?" Wendy said.  
"Yes, and all I'm hearing is a yipping little girl scared of her own shadow."  
"Well, that's nice. Thank you. You know, I will go home. See if there's any pot left over when you get back."  
She stormed off, out of the lab. Andrea waved her goodbye.  
"I'm really worried," she deadpanned. "Oh, no, the Springwood Slasher is going to get me!"  
She laughed and got back to work.

2

It was well after midnight when she left the lab. The medical college was housed in a large building way off in a corner of the campus, practically sitting off campus itself. The walk back to her dorm was considerable but she didn't get very far that night.  
She spotted the man dragging something through the parking lot right off the medical building. This was technically off campus, a parking lot for an old boiler room, part of a power plant that had once been thriving but was now a ghost town. The man was not tall - a little short, in fact - with reddish blonde hair and a dirty sweater red and green stripes on the chest and back but with flat red arms. He was dragging a black plastic bag, possibly a trash bag. It looked somewhat heavy and bulky and he was further inconvenienced by a sack he had slung over one shoulder.  
She approached the man silently, head cocked, inquisitive. In the skies above, clouds gathered, lightning flashed. The man still hadn't seen Andrea yet so she pushed it further, walking right up behind him.  
"Need help?" she asked.  
He wasn't surprised - or, at least, he didn't act surprised - and just turned around to regard her, all cool calm and composure. He smiled at her. It was strange: half-winning, half-sinister.  
"No," he said, "thank you. I've got it."  
"Looks pretty heavy," Andrea said.  
"It'll be fine. My car's right over there."  
He pointed and she looked. The man dropped the bag and it fell to one side of Andrea. She couldn't help but notice that the bag opened slightly when it dropped. Andrea could clearly see a leg.  
She knelt down, reached out a hand to touch the leg. Above her, the man rummaged in the sack with a hand and came out with a glove that he slipped on. It had razors for fingers. He raised the clawed hand above his head, ready to strike.  
"Is this a body?" Andrea said.  
The man - Fred Krueger - was just about to strike, but was stopped by the next thing that Andrea said:  
"Fascinating," she said. "A little girl?"  
She looked up at him, questioning eyes spotting the razored glove, raising an eyebrow. With a sideways smile, she challenged him.  
"Did you kill her?" she asked.  
Krueger didn't know what to say. Slowly, he lowered the glove.  
"You're not afraid?" he said.  
"No," Andrea said. "I'm intrigued."  
She stood up, offered her hand, thought better of it, and simply gave a tiny little bow.  
"I'm Andrea Saunders," she said. "I go to the college here. I'm in the medical program but my real interest is in the mind. So, someone like you - I'm assuming you're this 'Springwood Slasher' everyone's been talking about - someone like you would be of great interest to me. I won't tell anyone. I just want to know a little about you, your methods, your thought process."  
Krueger thought about it for a minute, then grabbed hold of Andrea by the front of her sweater. He pulled her close, their faces inches apart.  
"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you right now," he said, "and dump your body along with this little angel?"  
Andrea thought about it. She had to tread carefully here.  
"Because you're intrigued, too," she said. "You want to be observed. You strike me as someone who likes to be watched, someone who needs an audience. I can be that audience. Just sometimes, not all the time."  
The Springwood Slasher smiled and it was hideous, charming and poisonous. Andrea smiled back and her smile wasn't much better.

3

"This is where you take them," Andrea said.  
It was several months later. Krueger and Andrea had spoken on more than one occasion but hadn't met in person until now. They were deep in the boiler room where Krueger worked, in a forgotten hole that no one ever went to anymore.  
"Yes," Krueger said. "Most of the time."  
"It's an interesting place," Andrea said.  
She touched the various pieces of metal, torture devices, weapons. Krueger watched her as she made her way around the room.  
"How long do you keep them before you..." Andrea said.  
"Kill them?" Krueger finished her sentence.  
"Yes. Kill them."  
"Not long. Most of the time. Day or two. A few I've kept longer. And a few I've killed within the hour after I've snatched them."  
Andrea pulled a small pad of paper and a pen out of her purse. She looked at Krueger.  
"Do you mind if I take notes?" she asked.  
"Yes, I do mind," Krueger said.  
"Oh, well, then..."  
She put away the items. She took a few steps towards him, cautiously.  
"What do you think about when you kill them?" she asked.  
Krueger, looking sinister in an old fedora, smiled and picked up a straight razor on a nearby work bench. He lightly sliced at a thumb as he spoke.  
"It's the power," he said. "They're so small, so vulnerable. Their lives are in my hands. I hold the power. You can't imagine how amazing that feels."  
Andrea nodded, walking back and forth through the room. Water dripped from the ceiling in several places across the room.  
"And this one," she said, "what are you going to do to this one?"  
She had stopped at another bench, on which lay a young girl, supine, bound and gagged. Her eyes were filled with tears and terror. Andrea watched her, devoid completely of emotion. Krueger joined her to look at the scared little girl. He smiled.  
"Something juicy," he said.

4

Andrea sat in the courtroom, looking prim and proper, legs crossed, arms in her lap, a serious, respectful look on her face. This is what she looked like on the outside. Inside was a different story. Inside, she was trying not to laugh.  
It was the day of Krueger's trial. They had caught him, finally, and Andrea did not aid the prosecution, nor did Krueger reveal anything about Andrea's "involvement," either. They had met up several times over the period when she had met him until the day he was arrested. She hadn't been able to speak with him in custody but she had spoken briefly with his lawyer.  
Which was why she was trying not to laugh.  
During the whole period that the prosecution was presenting its case, showing slide after slide of victims photos, Andrea knew what was coming. Knew what Kreuger's lawyer had up his sleeve. It was going to be beautiful.  
Inevitably, the moment came. The prosecution rested and it was the defense's turn. And the bombshell went off. A simple matter of an unsigned warrant. Just a little thing, and their whole case collapsed like a house of cards.  
Freddy was free.  
Lt. Thompson, Blocker and practically everyone else in the courtroom was furious. It was a madhouse. Krueger was released. Andrea didn't dare see him right away. That would have to wait until the smoke had cleared. But would it ever clear? Would the town let him be free?

5

Andrea watched, from hiding, as the parents of Elm Street - dozens of them - torched Krueger in the boiler room of the power plant. She shook her head: it was a shame. Krueger was such an interesting subject to study. She felt like she wasn't able to spend nearly enough time with him. She wanted to learn more from him.  
Donald and Marge Thompson, along with Blocker, led the group of parents. Andrea didn't like them, straight off. There were high-and-mighty, holier than thou types, stuck up and hypocritical. Andrea instinctively found herself wanting to see them punished in some way.  
As the boiler room burned, Andrea quietly slipped away, back into Springwood, onto her new life.

6

After Krueger was killed, Andrea Saunders left him behind, tucked away in her mind, for a while. She graduated, pushed herself, became Dr. Saunders, opened her own practice. All the while, she stayed in Springwood. Something kept her there. In retrospect, she decided that it was Krueger all along, reaching out, encouraging her to stay.  
It was in the late 70s/early 80s when she started researching dreams: and, further, dream diving. She would take naps at odd hours of the day. Small ones, fifteen to twenty minutes, enough time to drop into a dream state and then wake back up, her mind refreshed, new ideas in her head.  
At night, she explored her dreams more extensively. Eventually, she found Freddy.  
Or, perhaps, he found her.  
They shared something deeper in her unconscious than they did in the flesh. Their minds met, intertwined. And she found him much more attractive now than he was in life. He had more power than he ever had previously.  
She knew, of course, that Freddy was using her, playing up her silly, romantic side, but so be it. It was her only release.  
But, she also knew, that one day he would ask her to do something. Something unethical, something dangerous even.  
Something diabolical.


	11. The Pact

1

At first, it didn't seem real. Jill refused to believe it. She listened to what the social worker had to say, not really listening. The woman was saying something about sending Tiffany to some kind of facility - Westin something - seeing as Jill, though technically an adult, couldn't very well take care of a seventeen year old. She nodded, silent as the woman talked on and on. There were papers involved and Jill signed things left and right, initialed up and down.  
Finally, the social worker left and Jill instantly reached for the phone, dialed Gale. Gale picked up almost on the first ring.  
"Hey," Jill said.  
"Hey," Gale said. Jill could tell that her best friend had been crying. Jill, herself, had not cried. None of it seemed real.  
"How are you?" Even as she spoke, she knew how stupid it sounded, how pathetic and insufficient it most certainly was.  
"I don't know," Gale said. "They're gone. I mean, I knew that we - I, at least, was planning on leaving town, leaving them, but...it just... They're not here anymore. I don't..."  
She lapsed into silence.  
"I know," Jill said. "It's just...insane. I don't know how to react. I mean, Mom died when I was still young, but Dad...he might have not been around much but he was my dad. He was..."  
"I don't know if I can go on," Gale said.  
Silence fell again. Jill got up, paced the kitchen.  
"The woman," she said, trying to change the subject, "the social worker, she said that they were going to be taking Tiffany away. She's with you right now, right?"  
"Yeah," Gale said.  
"Okay, well, we have to move. If we're going to get out of this alive, it has to go down tonight."  
"Tonight? But what about funerals and arrangements and shit?!"  
"Forget about all that, just forget about it. We can't think about all that. If they take Tiffany to some orphanage or, worse, some state facility, we'll never get her out, and Krueger will kill her just like he's killed all the rest of us."  
"Right. So what's the plan?"  
"We meet up."  
"Where?"  
"Beefy Boy parking lot. One hour."  
"Okay, we'll be there."  
Jill could tell that she was crying again. Jill was annoyed at first, then realized that she was crying, too. It all came crashing down on her. Gale disconnected, leaving Jill alone with her grief.

2

Gale hung up with Jill. She wiped away her tears. She was sitting on her bed in her room. Tiffany came into the room when she heard the phone hang up. She joined Gale on the bed, put her arms around her.  
"Jill says that it's time," Gale said. "She says that they're going to take you away, social services or some bullshit. So we have to do it now."  
"Now? Leave now?"  
Gale nodded.  
"We're supposed to meet her in an hour," she said.  
"Are we ready?" Tiffany asked.  
"I don't know. I...I don't think I am. How can I fight if I feel like this?"  
Tiffany held Gale's face in her hands. She looked straight in her eyes.  
"You use it," she said.  
"What?" Gale said.  
"You use the pain. Use the suffering. Freddy uses the same thing so you fight fire with fire. Hit it back at him. Be strong."  
Gale kissed her. Like all of their kisses, it felt real, it felt right. When it was over, they got off the bed.  
"Look on the bright side," Tiffany said, "no matter what happens, we'll at least get some sleep tonight. Whether we wake up or not is a different matter."  
Gale smiled.  
"You kill me," she said.  
They kissed again, this one just a tiny peck. Gale packed, getting clothes and supplies together. In her closet, she found an old, sturdy baseball bat, one she hadn't seen in years. She held it in her hands. It felt good. She swung it a few times.  
"You ready?" Tiffany said.  
"As I'll ever be," Gale said.

3

Eric stared at the empty kitchen, with the shitty little table, old and dirty. He shook his head, wiped away tears. He had lost three of his best friends and his mother all in the space of less than one week.  
"Why did you have to go there, Mom?" he asked the empty kitchen. "Why the fuck did you go?! Didn't you see? Couldn't you have figured it out, you dumb bitch?! Fuck you!"  
He grabbed a dirty glass out of the sink and flung it across the room where it shattered against the wall. He followed the glass with every plate he could find until he broke down, sobbing, on his knees on the filthy linoleum.  
After a few minutes, he got up, walked to the fridge, opened the top - the freezer - and grabbed the bottle of vodka stored there. It was his mother's favorite. He spun off the top, let it drop to the floor and took a long swig of it. It burned his insides, felt good and terrible, sublime and Hellish.  
He looked around the house for the next few minutes, thinking about everything: his mom, the plan, the last dream that he had - where he saw Freddy as a boy - and it all seemed to connect in his head, suddenly. He knew what they had to do.  
Jill had already called him, told him about the meetup. He took another long swig of the vodka then threw the bottle against the wall where he had thrown the glass and dishes.  
There was a pile of newspapers in one corner of the kitchen, the steady build up of several days worth of newspapers. Eric grabbed the top paper off the pile and crumpled it up in one hand. He rummaged in one of the kitchen drawers, grabbed his mom's car keys and a Zippo.  
He put the car keys in his pocket and then carefully lit the crumpled up newspaper with the Zippo. He lit the drapes first, both in the kitchen and the living room. Then he lit the couch on fire.  
He headed to the front door, put one hand on it. For a moment, he stopped and watched the house begin to burn. He considered just going into his room, shutting the door and going to sleep one final time on his bed, let the fire take him.  
"Fuck that," he said. "I'm coming for you, Krueger."  
He opened the front door, got in the car and took off. Behind him, his house burned to the ground in much the same manner as Stanley's house had.

4

"The door swings both ways," Eric said.  
They were in the Beefy Boy parking lot, their three cars parked close together. Eric crouched on the hood of his mom's car. He wasn't sitting, but was on his feet, crouched down, hands in front of him. He looked determined. Jill found herself nodding to just about everything he said. He seemed to be speaking what they were all thinking.  
She leaned against her dad's car, while Gale and Tiffany lounged in Gale's convertible. Tiffany was leaning against Gale.  
"If the Dream Pool is Humanity's collective unconscious, like Jung says," Eric continued, "then not only can Freddy get into our minds but we can get into his. The last time I fell asleep, when you three were in Maria's house, I found a way into Freddy's memories, into a nightmare he had about his stepfather beating him."  
"So can we use that against him?" Jill said. "Turn ourselves, or one of us, at least, into this guy in the dream?"  
"I don't think Freddy's afraid of his stepfather, exactly," Eric said.  
"So what do you suggest?" Gale said.  
"It's gonna be dangerous," Eric said.  
"What isn't these days?" Tiffany said.  
"Right," Jill said.  
"We have to get into his head again," Eric explained. "There's something in there, something in his memories that he's afraid of. Once we find out what that is, then we can use it against him."  
"Then we can trap him," Jill said.  
"What?" Eric said.  
"I've been thinking," Jill went on, "my plan still works: we trap him somehow, using his memories, then we skip town, take Hypnocil, and while Freddy sleeps, the kids forget about him, he loses his power. Then he can't come back."  
"I don't know," Eric said.  
"Think about it," Jill said. "Right now, we're his focus. If we get his attention, use ourselves as bait, then he won't focus on anyone else. Then we trap in, hightail it the fuck out of here, and he dies, because no one else will be thinking about him, dreaming about him."  
"So you do want to leave, then?" Eric said.  
"We've got nothing left here," Jill said. "At least, I don't. What about the rest of you?"  
"Right," Gale said.  
Tiffany nodded. Eric got off the car. Gale and Tiffany got out of her car while Jill took a few steps forward.  
"Then we're decided," Eric said. "I go in, find out what scares Freddy, then we take the fight to the fucker."  
"I'm going in," Jill said.  
"No," Eric said. "It's dangerous. The last time, I made a noise and Freddy knew I was there. He changed it from his nightmare to mine."  
"I don't care," Jill said. "This all started when I saw Jesse burn at the Valiant. I'm going in."  
Eric shook his head.  
"You're crazy," he said.  
"Look who's talking," Jill said.  
He smiled, nodded.  
"All right," he said.  
"Good," Jill said. "We're gonna do this. Who's with me?"  
She put out her hand to seal the pact. Tiffany was the first to put out her hand, followed by Gale. Eric shook his head but put out his hand, too.  
And the pact was sealed.

5

Jill lay down in the backseat of Gale's car, the others surrounding her: Gale and Tiffany in the front seat, looking over the back, Eric standing outside the car, hands set firmly on the window frame.  
"Okay," he said, "look for the Pool. It's always there but you have to find it."  
"I should really be doing this," Gale said, "I can call the Pool."  
"It's gotta be me," Jill said. "Don't you see? You can call the Pool, Gale. It takes you to us, connects us. We're gonna need that. Eric, it pointed you in the right direction but not quite where we needed to be to get what we need to use against Freddy. So, for me, it will work. If I can find it, it'll take me where I need to go."  
The others nodded.  
"Be ready to pull me out, though, if it looks like I'm about to die," Jill said with a nervous smile.  
"We'll be ready," Gale said.  
"Okay," Jill said. "Here I go."  
She leaned back, closed her eyes, sure she'd fall instantly to sleep. She was annoyed when it didn't happen. She tried closing her eyes tighter. No go.  
"What bullshit," she said. "I should be exhausted. What's wrong?"  
She opened her eyes in frustration. And sat up, in shock.  
The others were gone and Gale's car was now on a raised hill overlooking a long, weed-strewn empty lot, on the other side of which was 1428 Elm. Here, in the dreamscape, the House was larger, somehow, more menacing. It seemed to loom over the vacant lot like a spectre.  
And there were the little girls, off to one side of the House, jumping rope and singing. Jill got cautiously out of the car and walked towards the House. She didn't want to enter it but if she couldn't find the Pool out here, then it would have to be inside somewhere.  
"Great," she said.  
She passed a rusted old swingset, one of the swings moving on its own, rusted chains making a hideous screeching sound. There was an inhuman wind. It felt so palpable that Jill expected it to reach out and strangle her.  
As she approached the House, she stopped by the little girls, sighed. She had to try, at least.  
"Little girls," she said.  
Again, all but one of them scattered. The one who remained held her arms close to her body, scared.  
"Have you seen a small body of water around anywhere?" she asked.  
The little girl looked confused. Jill tried again.  
"Like a pond?" she said.  
"No," the little girl said softly.  
"Damn."  
"There's a well."  
"Okay. That might be it. Where is it?"  
"It's in the back of the House."  
"Can I get to it by going around the House?"  
The little girl shook her head.  
"You can't get through the fence," she said. "You'll have to go through the House."  
"Of course," Jill said.  
"Are you going to stop Freddy?" It was a whisper.  
"I'm gonna try."  
"Good luck."  
"Thanks. I'll need it."  
But the little girl was gone, swallowed up by the dreamscape. Jill's whole body shook, physically ill. She forced her breathing to normalize, then approached the front door of the House.  
Jill opened the door, stepped inside cautiously. The windows throughout the House were broken, their drapes torn, full of holes, blowing in the eerie wind. Doors slammed throughout the House and Jill could hear footsteps.  
She searched for the sound's source, casting her gaze left and right, behind her. Nothing. While she was searching, she kept moving forward, determined to reach the back of the House, and the yard behind it.  
The footsteps continued to plague her. They always seemed near, like whoever was making them was right behind her. Suddenly, the answer dawned on her and she looked up in dread.  
Above her, legs and arms flat on the ceiling, were two little girls in white: the ones who had abandoned their friend in the front yard. They were crawling on the ceiling, following her. But there was something different about them here in the House.  
In here, they had no faces. Just flat, empty surfaces, like an egg shell made of pink, nubile skin.  
Jill tried to suppress a scream but when they scittered towards her, she couldn't resist. She screamed, and ran towards the back. The faceless little girls chased her, running like wild beasts. They snarled as they ran, apparently not needing mouths to make noises.  
The hallways seemed to stretch out for miles. Jill could feel herself sweating. It was all so real. How could this be a dream?  
Jill suddenly came upon a dead end: a wall where there didn't appear to be one before. She turned slowly around, just in time to see one of the little faceless girls drop from the ceiling onto the floor. She landed deftly on her feet, crept towards her. The second girl followed. They snorted and snarled like pigs, screeching inhumanly.  
Behind them, somewhere back along the endless hallway, a stray lamb wandered, bleating. Then she saw him.  
Standing motionless.  
Freddy.  
He laughed, the horrid sound echoing down the hall. Jill stopped herself from screaming by putting a hand over her mouth. She pulled herself together and looked around. There were open windows on either side of her, wind-blown drapes either inviting an escape or warning of impending danger behind them.  
Freddy roared and ran down the hallway towards her. With no time left, she picked a side - her right - and jumped through a window.  
Her choice seemed to pay off. When she hit the ground, she could feel grass. She looked up. She was in the backyard: a craggy, uneven lawn covered in weeds and gnarled, dead trees. There was the well, at the edge of the property.  
It looked ancient. Moss crawled up it. A wooden structure framed it. Jill assumed that a water bucket was once suspended above it but was now long gone.  
She got up and ran towards the well. Behind her, Freddy jumped out of the window, right on her tail. She was halfway to the well when he slashed at her, barely missing her vulnerable back.  
As she closed the distance between herself and the well, she wondered whether this was really where the Pool was or if it was just wishful thinking on her part. She just had to believe that it really was the Pool. It had to be.  
Freddy was almost on top of her when she reached the well and jumped into it. She watched the stone sides of the well as she fell, watched them turn from stone to raw, red, pulsing flesh. The well had become a throat or vein, breathing, moving all around her.  
For a moment, she was scared. This wasn't the well. It was Freddy's mouth, his hideous, diseased throat, and he had swallowed her, would be digesting her in another moment.  
She started to scream then stopped when she saw it below her.  
The Dream Pool.  
It was rushing up towards her. She closed her eyes, put her hands together and dived into it.  
The water enveloped her and she found herself in the arms of another woman, a dark-haired beauty. This other woman led her through the water, pushed her out the other side.  
Jill landed on the floor of a dirty basement. She looked up in time to see the Dream Pool on the surface of the wall she had emerged from. It was fading away fast but she could still see the beautiful woman there in the water. She was waving at Jill.  
"When it's all over," the woman said, "come and find me." She was fading away, her voice receding into nothingness. "I'm in the beautiful dre..."  
She was gone, along with the Dream Pool. Jill shook her head, confused. She put herself together again and examined the basement. It was a dank, dark place.  
As she looked around, something lurched forward, accompanied by the sound of something massive moving, something that shouldn't normally move. Jill whirled around, searched for the source of the sound, found it.  
It came from an old, rusty, disused refrigerator. A chain had been welded to either side of it, both ends hanging down. There was a sticker for an old ice cream brand that Jill didn't recognize - Harvey's - near the handle. The illustration showed a small ice cream truck zooming down a residential street, its driver a mad, grinning cartoon lunatic.  
The appliance lunged forward like an animal. As Jill watched, it growled, its door swinging open and closed.  
Above her, a door opened. The fridge moved back into place immediately. Jill hid herself under the stairs.  
"Come on," a loud, drunk voice said.  
"No, I don't want to!" a boy's voice said.  
Jill covered her mouth, not wanting to make a sound, as the pair came down the stairs above her. The man was unkempt, with longish black hair tucked up under a black baseball cap. He dragged a boy behind him, who looked about ten, with reddish hair, some freckles.  
The man threw the boy into the basement, where he fell to the ground, the wind knocked out of him. The boy looked up at the man in terror.  
"Do I have to take my medicine?" he asked.  
"I think this calls for something a little more severe," the man said.  
"No."  
"Yes. I think you need a 'treatment'."  
"Please, no!"  
The man grabbed the boy again, dragged him towards the fridge. He opened the fridge door. The boy - Freddy, Jill knew - struggled, scared out of his mind. The man threw Freddy inside the fridge, closed it on him, locked it with a padlock attached to the end of one of the chains welded to the sides of it.  
Freddy screamed; shrieked, really. Jill could tell that the fridge wasn't powered but, all the same, it was tight in there, claustrophobic. It was horrible.  
"Be good and you'll only be in there for a few minutes," the man said.  
Then he left the basement, heading up the stairs above Jill's head. Freddy continued to scream, nearly out of his mind with fear.  
"That's it," Jill said. "We've got it."  
Then she heard someone on the steps above her. She looked up, through the gaps in the stairs, to see Freddy - in all his grown-up, burned glory - looking down at her. She screamed as Freddy stomped a mighty foot down on the stairs. The stair shattered, sharp pieces of wood flying everywhere.  
Freddy dropped down, landing right in front of Jill. He smiled, raised his glove.  
"Thank you for playing, Jill!" he said.  
Frantically, Jill reached out and grabbed hold of one of the sharp pieces of wood. She plunged it into her arm before Freddy could slash her.  
She instantly awoke, sitting up in the back of Gale's car. Tiffany reached out to her, put a hand on her shoulder. The others looked at her expectantly, asking an unspoken question.  
"Yeah," she said. "We got it."

6

A few minutes later, they were decided. All of them stood between the cars, Jill leading the conversation again, wrapping a bandage around the dream-wound in her arm.  
"Okay," Jill said, "so it's settled: we trap him in the fridge and get the fuck out of town."  
"Right," Gale said.  
"Yeah," Tiffany said.  
"Fuckin' A," Eric said.  
"Do we do it right now?" Tiffany asked. "Then get the Hypnocil?"  
"No," Eric said. "I want this miracle drug in my hands before we try out our little plan."  
"Plus, we should all get ourselves ready," Gale said. "Mentally, I mean. I was thinking, it's a dream, right?"  
"Right," Jill said.  
"So, if it's a dream, why can't we be whatever we want? Why can't we use our skills, our interests to fight him, distract him? Lead him to the fridge? Why can't we be more than what we are in the waking world?"  
"Like a Dream Corps," Eric said.  
"Yeah," Jill said. "Cool."  
"Hardcore Dream Corps," Tiffany said.  
"Good idea, Gale," Eric said. "I'll be James Fucking Dean."  
"Nice," Gale said.  
"So, where does your therapist work?" Tiffany asked.  
"Just off Elm," Jill said.  
"Okay, then," Eric said. "Let's go."  
"Yeah, I'll introduce all of you to her."  
They got in their cars, and took off, Jill leading the way. Somewhere out there, in the ever-increasing darkness, was Hypnocil, an unsure drug. Somewhere out there was Dr. Saunders, who knew more about what was going on than any of them realized.  
And somewhere out there was Freddy.  
Waiting.


	12. Dr. Saunders' Reign Of Terror

1

They parked in front of the strange, U-shaped building where Dr. Saunders' office was located. It was already almost nine but Jill was sure that her therapist would be there; she just knew it. This made things both easier and harder. Easier, because they didn't have to break in; Jill could just act like it was an emergency, which, under the circumstances, it actually was. Harder, because they would have to go through Dr. Saunders and either subdue her or come up with a really great - sublime, even - lie. Jill didn't want to hurt Dr. Saunders, she had been mostly helpful to the young woman.  
Getting out of their cars, they met up in front of the building. It was isolated from the rest of the buildings around it, set out and separate.  
"What's the plan?" Eric said.  
"Well," Jill said, "I'll make up some kind of lie to the security guard at the front desk, get us inside the building."  
"I don't think that's gonna fly," Eric said.  
He indicated the baseball bat Gale held in one hand. She slapped it against her open palm again and again.  
"Hey," she said, "there has to be a plan B."  
"So you're saying I can't make up a good lie?" Jill said.  
"What are you going to say?" Gale said.  
"I have no idea. Let's just see what comes out of my mouth."  
She pushed open the front doors, stepped inside. Now was not the time for hesitating. The rest of them followed her. The lobby of the building was not too dissimilar to any modern office building: large and spacious, with a little furniture and a security desk set back a ways, near the back of the building by the elevators and the stairwell. Jill stopped abruptly, causing Gale to bump into her.  
"What is it?" Gale said.  
"Look," Jill said.  
The others saw what she meant: the security desk was empty. They looked around, didn't see anyone.  
"He on a piss break?" Eric said.  
"Maybe," Jill said, though she was unsure, suspicious.  
They all cautiously approached the security desk, took a quick look behind it. Nothing. Jill shook her head.  
"This feels wrong," she said.  
"I say we don't let it bother us," Eric said. "Let's just go up."  
"Yeah," Tiffany said.  
"Jill," Gale said, "he might be taking a dump or something. Let's go."  
Jill nodded.  
"Okay," she said.  
"Elevators?" Eric said.  
"No," Jill said, "we take the stairs."  
They headed to the stairwell, all of them filing inside, leaving the lobby empty once again. Though they had a quick look behind the security desk before they left, they did not see the security guard, stuffed under the desk, blocked by his chair, which had been pushed up against his flabby body. He was dead, a metal pen stuck in the back of his neck. His mouth and eyes were wide open in a horrific, silent scream.

2

Jill made them take the stairs because she wanted to get one more look at the crazy, zig zag stairwell. She memorized it, took in all the little details she could. She could use this in the dream, something to confuse and disorient Freddy.  
"Okay," she said as they continued walking, "I'll go in. I think you guys should stay out in the waiting room."  
"No way," Gale said.  
"Nuh-uh," Eric said.  
"Nothing's going to happen," Jill said. "Dr. Saunders is just my therapist. I'm going to try to convince her to give me the Hypnocil. She's a reasonable person, I'm sure we can work something out. If we have to bribe her or something, we've got the money we took from Maria."  
"I don't know," Gale said.  
"I only want you guys on hand in case we have to intimidate her," Jill explained. "I hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does..."  
"That's when we come in," Tiffany said.  
"Right," Jill said.  
Gale sidled up next to Jill, pushed the two of them ahead of the others by a few feet. She whispered to her.  
"Are you okay?" she asked.  
"I don't know," Jill said. "It's not just my dad, Bobby and the others, it's..."  
"What?"  
"I had a brother, Gale."  
"What do you mean?"  
"I had a brother. He was older than me and, I guess, Freddy..."  
"Oh, shit."  
"Krueger took him, killed him. I was too young to remember him."  
"I haven't seen any pictures of him."  
"I spent some time looking at old pictures before I left today. He isn't in any of them, but..."  
"Go on."  
"Well, there's hardly any pictures at all from that period."  
"You mean, of you?"  
"No, nothing at all. Not of me, my dad, my mom. My brother. Nothing. It's like they erased him, erased everything connected to Freddy."  
"Jesus," Gale said.  
"And," Jill continued, "I kind of think this whole town has done the same thing. They're all afraid of Freddy. It's like they knew he was going to come back. Like they were afraid if they said his name three times, he would appear in the mirror behind them. Is that crazy?"  
"No. I don't think so."  
"I wonder whether I would have got along with him well enough."  
"What was his name?"  
"Marty," Jill said. "His name was Marty."  
She wiped away a tear. Then she steeled herself for the work ahead, turned her heart to ice and moved forward. They were nearly to the top of the building now.

3

The waiting area was a nicely furnished, comfortable room with several chairs and couches and a desk for the receptionist, who, naturally, wasn't in attendance. The four of them walked in, looked around. Only a single lamp on the receptionist's desk was lit, shrouding the room in long, creeping shadows.  
"Nobody here," Eric said, though he still whispered.  
Jill shook her head. She pointed at the door leading to Dr. Saunders' office. A light was visible in the crack beneath it. Jill shuffled them out of the waiting area and back into the hallway outside it. They conferred, whispering the whole time.  
"Okay," Jill said, "I'm going in. Stay out here."  
"Out here?!" Gale said.  
"I don't like this," Tiffany said.  
"Yeah," Eric said, "there's this whole unsettling vibe going on here. Not good."  
"You're all overreacting," Jill said. "Nothing's going to happen."  
"Why are you so sure?" Gale said.  
"Why are you so sure something is going to happen? We're all just on edge and paranoid. This woman is my doctor. Well, my shrink, at least. There's nothing to be afraid of."  
"In the lobby," Eric said, "you said that none of this felt right. You said that."  
"I know, I know," Jill said. "But I'm out of my mind. Clearly. And so are all of you. Dr. Saunders wouldn't hurt me."  
Gale shook her head.  
"If you're sure," she said.  
"I am," Jill said.  
"You go in," Eric said. "But we're going in there if we hear anything, if we smell anything! Any funny business at all. You understand?"  
"I do."  
"We got your back," Tiffany said.  
"Okay," Jill said. "Here I go."  
She went back into the waiting area, leaving the others out in the hallway. Here, alone in the dark, shadows playing across her face, she suddenly wasn't so sure of herself.

4

Dr. Saunders stood at a sideboard in her office, sipping a glass of what looked like brandy when Jill entered the office. The doc turned to regard Jill as she walked in, closing the door behind her.  
"Jill," Dr. Saunders said, "this is a surprise."  
Somehow, Jill sensed that it wasn't a surprise at all. Something in the doc's face gave it away.  
"You look awful," Dr. Saunders said. "Would you like a glass?"  
"No, thank you," Jill said.  
"Please, have a seat."  
"I'll stand."  
"Very well. My secretary didn't buzz me. Have you seen her?"  
"No."  
"She was supposed to be working late with me," Dr. Saunders said, a crooked look on her face. "Must have skipped out early, I guess. Oh, well."  
"Dr. Saunders, I came because I need--"  
"I know why you came."  
She left the sideboard and approached Jill, taking the glass with her. She took another sip, looked Jill straight in the eyes.  
"You came for that drug," she said. "Hypnocil."  
"Yes," Jill said.  
"And you want my whole supply. All of it."  
"Yes."  
Dr. Saunders walked to the big window which looked out from her office. She gestured Jill to join her. Cautiously, Jill did so, standing next to the woman, looking down at the bottom of the U-shape that made up the building.  
"I've been doing some research on the drug," Dr. Saunders said. "Reading the various papers I could find on it. Very experimental. But it looks like it would work. I still don't know if it's right for you, though."  
"I need it," Jill said. "I can't sleep or I'll die."  
"It's that simple?"  
"That simple."  
"Well, I suppose I should give it to you, then."  
She made no effort to move, however, and Jill was frustrated, visibly so. Dr. Saunders got closer to Jill, put a hand on her cheek.  
"You're so young," she said. "So beautiful. And I don't just mean that in the way that adults usually mean that. No. Believe me, I'd fuck the living shit out of you if I swung that way, if you know what I mean."  
"You're drunk," Jill said, swatting the woman's hand away and backing away from her.  
"And? It was you that came to me, not the other way around. I was minding my own business here in the privacy of my office before you came in. Why can't I be drunk? Huh? Tell me?"  
"I...I don't know."  
"It's been a trying day for me."  
"A trying day for you?! My father was burned alive today! Along with all my friends' parents!"  
"I know. I know, babe. God, you're a babe. And in such a different way than most girls. That deep, throaty voice. Jesus, you must make the boys crazy if you're making me feel this way!"  
"Are you going to give it to me or not?"  
"Oh, I'll give it to you. Follow me."  
She walked to a locked cabinet on a wall in the office, fiddling with a key around her neck. She took off the key, unlocked the cabinet, opened one side of it. There was the Hypnocil. Seven bottles of it. Jill looked at Dr. Saunders, asking silent permission.  
"Go ahead," Dr. Saunders said.  
Jill reached out and grabbed a bottle, examined the label, twisted off the cap. It all looked genuine.  
"It's real," Dr. Saunders said. "And it's not cheap, believe me."  
"I can you pay for them," Jill said.  
"Don't worry about it."  
She made a "forget about it" gesture with her hands, polished off the rest of her glass, set it down on an uneven surface, where it promptly fell to the ground. It didn't shatter and Jill watched it fall, shaking her head.  
"What's going on, doc?" she said.  
"Let me tell you something," Dr. Saunders said. "Don't let anyone get in the way of your dreams. Of what you want out of life. Hear me? Don't. People spend entirely too much time just doing things because others tell them to do them. They tell... What was I talking about? Oh, yes, Freddy Krueger."  
"What?"  
"Freddy Krueger. He was that man that you thought was trying to get you in your dreams."  
She made little claws out of her hands, hissed, then laughed. Jill frowned.  
"I knew him," Dr. Saunders said.  
"You did?" Jill said.  
"Yes, indeed, I did. He wasn't like the papers said he was. No, your father might of muck-raked him, but he was a sweet man. Well, sweet isn't the word. He had power. Real power. Do you know what real power is?"  
"No, I guess I don't."  
"He had it. Whatever it is. Real power. He could snuff out a life. I knew that was power, even then. Even before I knew what it felt like."  
"You're out of your mind."  
"We're all out of our mind. All of us, Jill. Sexy, sexy Jill. Fuck. How could you have come from the sperm of that piece-of-shit hack that had such a grudge against Freddy? So he killed your brother, so what? What's one life in the grand scheme of things? You know what I think?"  
"Do I want to know?"  
"I think you're father had a hard-on for Krueger. Yeah. He wanted Freddy to take him up the ass, just like that hypocrite, Buford Violet. Now, he really, really wanted Freddy to fuck the shit out of him. Literally."  
"I'm gonna go, doc," Jill said.  
"No, no," Dr. Saunders said, "don't go. I have to show you something."  
She opened the other side of the cabinet and Jill's jaw dropped. Sitting on a shelf all to itself was the glove. His glove.  
"Jesus Christ," Jill said.  
"I know," Dr. Saunders said. "Impressive, isn't it? You don't want to know what it cost me."  
"Where... How...?"  
"It's not important. What is important..."  
Quick as a snake, she grabbed something off a smaller shelf just below the shelf holding the glove. Jill didn't have time to register what it was - a syringe - before the needle was in her arm, the plunger pushed down instantly. Jill staggered back, mouth agape, looking at Dr. Saunders. The doc giggled, a hand over her mouth.  
"Oops," Dr. Saunders said.  
"What..." Jill said, "what did you just inject me with?"  
"A sedative. It's pretty fast-acting. You should be asleep within a few minutes."  
"You bitch. You fucking bitch. You've killed me."  
"I know, I know."  
She ran to Jill's side, put her arms around her. Jill felt the woman's hands exploring her body, reaching between her legs and squeezing.  
"Oh," she moaned, "Freddy's gonna love you."  
She kissed the girl on the side of the mouth. Jill elbowed her away. Dr. Saunders was hit in the stomach and fell back, laughing.  
"There's nothing you can do," she said, still laughing a bit. "Don't worry, though, you won't be alone. There's one for me, too."  
"I'm not ready. Not ready to fight him yet. It's too soon."  
Jill reached out as she stumbled, her hand grasping the doorknob of what looked like a closet. The door flung open and a body came falling out. Jill yelped and got out of the way. She wavered, her movement erratic. The body was that of a young woman. A long, sharp paperweight was lodged in her right eye.  
"Oh, that was my secretary," Dr. Saunders said. "Guess she's still here."  
"What did you do?" Jill said.  
"I've killed everyone in the building. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Doesn't matter, anyway. You and I are going into the dreamscape together and neither of us is coming back."  
"Fuck you!"  
The door to the office burst open, Gale, Eric and Tiffany storming into the room. Dr. Saunders reacted immediately, getting up and running to the cabinet. Still quick as a snake, she slipped the glove onto her right hand, whirled around, brandishing the weapon in front of her. She ran towards the three of them, screaming as she came.  
Jill was on the ground, between the woman and her friends. Several things happened in quick succession.  
Jill put out her foot to trip Dr. Saunders. It worked and the doc started to fall. At the same time, Gale swung her baseball bat as hard as she could, right at the doc's face.  
The bat connected, crushing Dr. Saunders' nose with a loud crack. The woman flew backwards, crashing through the big picture window. She fell, screaming as she plummeted towards earth. Her body broke apart instantly as she hit the concrete below, blood flying everywhere.  
Eric and Tiffany cradled Jill as Gale went to the broken window and looked down, winced. She shook her head.  
"Jill," Tiffany said. "Jill, stay awake."  
"I'm not ready," Jill said, tears in her eyes. "I can't fight him yet."  
"You have to," Eric said. "We all do."  
"Did..." Gale said, "did you all see that? I just...I just killed that woman."  
"She was a bitch," Tiffany said.  
"I guess so," Gale said.  
She joined the others at Jill's side. The three of them helped Jill to her feet.  
"I've only got another minute or so," Jill said. "Then I'll be asleep."  
"This has to happen now," Eric said.  
"Right," Gale said.  
Eric and Gale helped Jill out of the office while Tiffany collected the bottles of Hypnocil. They headed toward the elevators. It was all about to go down.


	13. The Trap + Epilogue

1

They left Jill's car behind and continued on in Eric's and Gale's cars. Jill traveled with Gale, Tiffany at her side the whole time, trying to keep her awake. They picked up a cup of cold water at Beefy Boy and Tiffany periodically splashed it in Jill's face.  
"Come on," Tiffany said, "stay awake. Come on!"  
Their plan was to use themselves as bait so they wanted to get close, physically, to Krueger in some way. There were two options: the House or the boiler room of the power plant. They chose the latter and arrived at the plant at just before 10:00pm.  
The three others helped Jill out of the car and into the plant. It was all so easy. The gate was hanging open, broken sometime long ago. If they had had a moment to think about it, they might have been suspicious. As it was, they didn't have time to consider anything.  
They entered the plant and sat Jill down on the ground in the filthy boiler room. Gale took off her leather jacket, threw it to the ground. Underneath, she was wearing a small white tank top. She was drenched in sweat by this point and she dazzled in the moonlight streaming in through the door of the boiler room.  
Tiffany laid Jill down gently. Jill clutched at her.  
"Gale!" she said. "Gale!"  
Gale was by Jill's side instantly. She held onto her friend.  
"We'll be with you," Gale said. "Find the Pool. All of you. We won't be together at first, but if we all find the Pool, I can pull us together. Now let's get some sleep."  
They all laid down on the filthy floor, beside each other. Jill moaned a few more times and then she was out, completely gone, dead to the world.  
"See you on the other side," Eric said as he closed his eyes.  
"Let's do this," Tiffany said.  
She shared a quick kiss with Gale, then the two of them leaned back and closed their eyes. All four of them fell into the dreamscape.

2

"Tiffany. Tiffany, wake up."  
Her father. His voice was soothing, calming.  
"Tiffany, I haven't forgotten what you did to me, you bitch."  
Tiffany forced her eyes open, expecting to see her father looking down on her, a look of pure malice on his face. But there was no one, nothing. Just a ceiling of concrete above her.  
She got up off the floor, disoriented, and looked around. Her father was nowhere to be seen, in fact, no one was. She was in what looked like a vast, cavernous parking garage. Somewhere, a loud, echoing sound made a rhythm. Tiffany bopped her head along to the rhythm, as she explored the dream. There weren't many cars, only a few scattered around the massive garage.  
There came a tapping, playing against the rhythm, discordant, metal. Tiffany knew, instinctively, that it was Freddy.  
"It's a dream," Tiffany said. "Just a dream. I can do whatever I want."  
She closed her eyes briefly, heard and felt something drop to the ground to next to her. She opened her eyes, looked down. A skateboard was at her side. A bitchin one. Black and grey, stylish.  
Her clothes were different, too: black and white, like her hair. She wore fingerless black leather gloves. She was looking good.  
She hopped on the skateboard and took off, ollieing off every surface, nailing everyone. She searched for the Dream Pool everywhere.  
Somewhere behind her, she heard a car revving up, its engine loud and powerful. Tiffany tried to ignore it but it got louder and louder, echoing throughout the vast parking garage. Tiffany pushed herself, skating faster than she ever could in real life, looked for the Pool.  
The car was just behind her now, gaining. She risked a quick glance over her shoulder at it.  
It was a red convertible, not unlike Gale's car but a richer, newer-looking red. It's top was on, a red and green stripe pattern, just like Freddy's sweater. The headlights looked like eyes, the grill like a snarling mouth. The hubcaps were razored. It was a Freddy car.  
The car was beside her now, menacing, trying to push her off the road. Tiffany was pushed into the wall, sparks flying from her skateboard wheels. She gaped when she saw who was behind the wheel. Up until now, she figured the car was driving itself.  
It was her father.  
Buford Violet was a rotting, stinking animated corpse, laughing at her one second, spitting out a grave worm the next. Tiffany almost fell off the skateboard and went under the wheels of the Freddy car. She righted herself just as the car made another attempt to run her into the wall.  
She roared and jumped into the air, landed the skateboard on the wall and kept moving. It was a dream - she knew it - and she was riding along the wall, defying physics.  
Then she saw it.  
Ahead of her: the Dream Pool. It had taken the form of a large puddle in the center of the parking garage. It glistened in the harsh light of the garage.  
The Buford Zombie reached out of the window and grabbed her, pulled her off the wall. Once again, she nearly went under the wheels.  
"This is my world!" Freddy said through Buford's body.  
The car sped ahead of her, came to a stop in front of the puddle, blocking her way. She stopped, kicked up her skateboard and caught it. The Freddy car turned slowly towards her, revving its engine.  
Soon, she was looking straight at the corpse of her father. He grinned and coughed up a mouthful of maggots.  
"You're not my father!" Tiffany said.  
"But you killed me, baby," Buford said. "Now, come on, let's make up."  
He lewdly licked his lips. Black bile poured from the side of his mouth. Tiffany drew in a deep breath, then reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of shades. Cool ones. She didn't even know she was carrying a pair.  
She put them on, defiantly. The car revved a few more times. Tiffany dropped the skateboard to its wheels, put one foot on it.  
The Freddy car sped towards her the very second that Tiffany started skating towards it. The two raced toward each other at breakneck speed.  
Less than ten feet from the car, Tiffany jumped, pushing the skateboard out in front of her like a shield, only held by her feet instead of her hands. She headed towards the windshield of the Freddy car.  
The Buford Zombie's mouth dropped open, its eyes bugged out, hanging on by mere tendons. It screamed as Tiffany crashed through the windshield.  
The skateboard took the creature's head clean off. Black blood cascaded down the front of its body as Tiffany continued through the car, tearing out the back window and landing on the concrete behind it. She raced towards the Pool as, behind her, the Freddy car flipped, tumbling over and over, then hitting a wall and coming to a rest.  
"Come and find me, Freddy!" Tiffany called out over her shoulder. "Come on!"  
Then she disappeared into the Dream Pool, skateboard and all.

3

Eric landed on hard asphalt but was on his feet in no time. He dusted himself off, made sure he looked presentable. It worked. He did look like James Dean: leather jacket, cigarette dangling from his mouth, cool hair.  
Looking around, he found that he was standing in the street in front of the local retirement home, with its big, luxurious lawn that he mowed for extra money on a regular basis. It had only been about a week since he last mowed it but that seemed so long ago now, a lifetime.  
Mr. Blaze sat on the front porch of the home, like he always did. The old man waved to Eric and Eric found himself waving back, despite himself. Everything seemed so normal, as if he wasn't dreaming at all.  
Which, of course, he wasn't. Dreaming? What a silly idea! This was a normal Saturday and he had to mow the lawn. Right? He waved vigorously at Mr. Blaze, a big smile on his face.  
The sun was bright, a little unseasonably warm, but it was a good day. Eric was glad he had worn shorts and a simple T-shirt for the job ahead. The lawnmower was waiting for him, parked neatly in a corner of the yard. It glinted in the sunlight; Eric could actually a small tinging sound that accompanied the glint of light.  
Eric smiled wider than he already was and walked - sauntered - towards the lawnmower. He saw that the retirement home must have bought a new lawnmower. This one was a riding lawnmower, red and green, shiny and beautiful. He liked it immediately.  
He hopped on it, started it up, the engine turned over gorgeously. He took off, mowing the lawn up and down, creating perfect rows of freshly-cut grass. Mr. Blaze smiled at him as he worked. Eric winked at the old man, who laughed. But there was something different about the old man today. Something about his skin. It looked fake, almost as if it had been painted on.  
A car horn honked in the street and Eric looked up to see a Greyhound bus waiting in the street for him. All of his friends were on the bus. Jill was driving, Bobby in the seat behind her, his arm draped over her shoulder. Riley and Ann were there, too, peaking out the windows.  
"Come on, Eric," Jill said.  
"Yeah," Riley said.  
"We're getting out of this little one-horse-town," Jill said.  
"I'll be done in a bit," Eric called back. "This new lawnmower's great! Should be able to get the job done in no time at all!"  
"Bus is leaving now," Bobby said. "There isn't going to be another one! Come on, man!"  
"I can't!" Eric said.  
"You'll never get out of here," Jill said.  
Eric looked at the lawn in front of him, looked at the bus. He stood up off the chair, intending to leave on the bus.  
"Son!" Mr. Blaze said behind him.  
Eric turned to regard the old man. Mr. Blaze was standing, which was something he never did before. There was something wrong with the old man. The skin on his face was peeling away in long, ugly strips.  
"You have a duty here," Mr. Blaze said. "That lawn isn't going to mow itself. Now get back to work."  
Eric thought long and hard, looked at Mr. Blaze, at the lawn, at the bus. He shook his head.  
"It's a dream," he said. "I have to find the Pool."  
"Pool?" Mr. Blaze said. "Don't talk nonsense, son."  
"Fuck you," Eric said.  
He got off the lawnmower. His James Dean clothes were back in place the second his feet hit the lawn. He looked around, trying to find the Pool. Maybe it was down the street. He had to ignore all this other nonsense: Mr. Blaze, the lawn, the bus. None of it mattered. Only the Pool mattered, only the plan, only the Trap.  
The bus honked its horn again, distracting Eric. He looked at it. Jill looked back at him expectantly.  
"Now or never," she said. "You'll be stuck in this town forever if you don't leave now."  
She made a good point, Eric had to admit it. He found himself starting towards the bus. Maybe the Pool was on the bus. Was that so far-fetched? He was almost off the lawn - on the very edge of it - when he felt a horrible pain shoot through his feet.  
He looked down and saw spikes - four of them - sticking through his feet, two in each foot. It was as if they had popped out of the ground and through his feet, which they probably had. Eric screamed.  
The spikes moved, curled inward, piercing him again, through the top of his feet this time. The bus started to move, started to leave. Jill waved at him as she passed by. His fingertips were just out of reach of the bus. If he could only just reach it.  
He extended himself as far as he could - his feet in extraordinary pain - gaining himself an inch or two. The bus was almost gone but he managed to grab hold of the rear bumper, held on tight. His might was actually slowing the bus, holding it in place.  
He was going to make it! He was going to get on the bus and get out of this town, once and for all! It was a foregone conclusion now.  
But the spikes held him hard to the ground. He fought against them, held his hands tight on the bumper. He stole a glance behind him, saw Mr. Blaze step off the porch and onto the lawn. His face was almost completely peeled off now, revealing the burned flesh beneath.  
"Krueger!" Eric said. "I'm getting out of here! You can't stop me!"  
Krueger laughed and got on the riding lawnmower, which now resembled some kind of mad cross between a normal riding lawnmower and an ice cream truck. It was white but had red and green stripes here and there. Krueger started it up, its engine loud and abrasive, black smoke billowing from its exhaust.  
Eric held onto the bus but it revved into another gear and tore away from him. There was a crunching sound as his wrists broke, a plop as they separated from his arms. He screamed as pain shot through his entire body.  
The bus took his hands and his skin with it.  
It tore away from his muscles and bones with a sickening, wet sound, peeling away like the false Mr. Blaze skin that Krueger had been wearing. With a final pull, the bus lurched away, Eric's hands and skin trailing behind it.  
Eric dropped to the ground, skinless and handless, blood spraying from the stumps where his arms now ended. Behind him, Krueger got the lawnmower moving. Its blades looked hideous, a great, razored mouth endless moving back and forth at breakneck speed. It ate the ground up as it approached him, great clumps of lawn flying into the air. Krueger laughed as he came.  
Eric tried to crawl away, the asphalt tearing at his exposed muscles, his stumps still pouring blood everywhere. The lawnmower reached his trapped feet, made mulch of them.  
Eric screamed again and the lawnmower ate him, inch by inch, blood spraying everywhere, like a sprinkler system gone haywire. Eric stopped moving by the time the lawnmower reached his chest. He was dead but the lawnmower continued, eating the rest of him up. His head went last, chewed up in the hungry teeth of the metal beast.  
When it was done, Krueger turned off the machine, got off it. He looked at the lawn, freshly-cut with a nice layer of blood to boot. He smiled, satisfied.  
Then he laughed, long and hearty.  
"One down," he said. "Three to go!"

4

"Ten minutes, Gale," the little guy who stuck his head in the room said.  
"What?" Gale said.  
But the little guy was gone, closing the door behind him. Gale looked around. She was in what looked like someone's bedroom. A ratty, filthy bedroom. The mattress was crawling with bed bugs, the corners of the room filled with nests of cockroaches, the ceiling covered in hanging cobwebs filled with black widows, the closet felt like it had eyes.  
Gale had been sitting on the bed but stood up the second she saw the state of it. Before she could shake off her disorientation, before she could convince herself that this was all a dream, there was a knock on the door.  
"Yes?" she said.  
A man opened the door, and came in. He was tall and fat, black thinning hair, greasy. A large, phallic cigar was stuck in his mouth. He wore a white T-shirt and khaki pants that were too small for him. He was covered in sweat.  
"Honey," he said, "you're gonna be great out there tonight. Cameras are all ready, Tiffany's ready, all the technicians are ready. We're gonna shoot the Hell of this thing."  
"Shoot?" Gale said. "Shoot what?"  
"The scene, come on."  
"And who are you?"  
"What, are you high? I'm your trusted director, who else would I be?"  
"Right," Gale said. "I think I remember..."  
"That's the spirit," the Director said. "Look, I have to thank you again for agreeing to this. You being a big star and all."  
"A big star?"  
"Well, sure. Hot 100, Billboard, album went gold and all that. You're becoming a big deal. So, doing something like this...well, it's kinda unheard of. Big score for us so, thank you."  
"You're...welcome. Remind me again what we're doing."  
"Man, you big stars really know how to party, don't you? Jesus, if I did that much coke, my head would explode. The scene. We're doing a sex scene for my new movie. You and Tiffany are gonna bang and--"  
"You're gonna shoot me and Tiffany fucking?"  
"Well, I wouldn't use the word fuck. I mean, come on, girls can't really fuck, now can they? Only somebody with a dick can fuck, am I right?"  
"Uh..."  
"Sure I'm right. I shoot porn, of course I'm right. I know sex and, let me tell you, lesbian shit ain't sex. It's just foreplay. But some people like it. As long as we got the guys jerking off around you two, it should play well enough."  
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Gale said.  
"Here I am running my mouth off," the Director said, "while you know all this already. I was talking with your boyfriend and he--"  
"My boyfriend?"  
"Yeah, Eric. He was telling me that you can't keep your hands off him. A real dick lover, he called you."  
"You're out of your mind!"  
She backed away from him, inching towards the closet. There was a pair of eyes watching them from the closet. As she approached it, the pair of eyes became a figure. The figure lunged.  
At the last second, Gale stepped out of the way of the figure, who was wearing a white mask and brandishing a knife. The figure tripped and Gale acted fast, reaching out and plunging her thumbs into the both of the figure's eyes. The figure's eyeballs popped, blood and goo running out of his eye sockets. The figure screamed, dropped the knife he was holding and put both hands to his face.  
Gale stomped on the figure's throat, breaking his windpipe instantly. The figure started to gasp. He couldn't breathe. The Director lunged for Gale as the figure died below them.  
Gale grabbed the knife that the figure had dropped and pointed it at the Director. The man put up both hands in a submissive gesture.  
"What the fuck is going on here?" Gale said.  
"Okay, okay," the Director said, "I admit it. Mikey here was gonna kill you and Tiffany during the scene. Lesbian stuff just doesn't sell that well for us. But snuff movies? Absolutely! They sell like hotcakes. In Germany and Eastern Europe, especially. And a snuff movie with an internationally famous recording star? Forget about it. Pure gold."  
"You sick fucking diseased prick. I can't believe you would do this. And to me! My career is just..."  
She trailed off.  
"Gale?" the Director said. "You there?"  
"No," Gale said.  
"No, you're not there?"  
"No, this is just a dream. And you're nothing."  
"What are you talking about?"  
"I'm calling the Pool. And you'll have to find me, Krueger! Hear me?!"  
"Pool? What the fuck are you--"  
He stopped speaking abruptly, his mouth filling with something. He coughed, water escaping from his lips. His midsection began to swell up with fluid. The skin on his head began to pull away from his skull. He screamed and, all at once, the Dream Pool escaped from his body, blowing him apart and filling the room with water almost instantly. Gale stood in the cleansing water for a moment before sinking into it and disappearing beneath its waves.

5

Jill sat in the bleachers, cheering along with the rest of the crowd. She sipped on her soda and took a bite of her hot dog. It was especially good today. On the football field below her, Bobby threw a pass to Riley, who caught it brilliantly, took it all the way to the goal. The crowd went wild and Jill got to her feet, raised the soda and hot dog high above her head, screamed and cheered.  
It was an amazing, dazzling day. The sun shown down on the field, with a few fluffy white clouds here and there. It wasn't hot, either. Just right. The perfect day, one could say.  
She sat back down. To her right was Lisa Webber, to her left, Tina Gray. The three of them were thick as thieves, as noisy as hens in a chicken coup.  
"Careful," Lisa said, "you're gonna spill that all over yourself."  
"What do I care?" Jill said. "The day I'm having? What's one little slip up?"  
The three of them laughed. Eric leaned over them from behind - the next bleacher row up - crowding their space. He laughed, too.  
"Oh, man," he said, "nice out today."  
"Yeah," Jill said. "Perfect."  
"Say, Jill."  
"What?"  
"Did you even know Lisa that well?"  
"What do you mean? She's one of my best friends."  
"Oh, yeah?"  
Lisa looked at them, confused, her smile faltering. Tina looked the same.  
"Of course I know Lisa," Jill said, but she was unsure.  
"How 'bout Tina here?" Eric said.  
"Well, yeah, she--"  
"Was killed before we were even in high school," Eric finished her thought.  
"That doesn't make any sense," Jill said.  
"You're right, it doesn't. You know what else doesn't make sense?"  
"What?"  
"The fact that Bobby and Riley are out there playing on that field."  
"What are you talking about?"  
"They're dead, Jill. Bobby, Riley, Lisa, Tina. All dead."  
"Fuck off, Eric," Jill said. "You're losing it. I mean, I know you're weird, but come on, don't ruin my perfect day."  
"I'm dead, too," Eric said. "Freddy got me. Just now, in fact. And you better wise up, figure out what's going on or he's gonna get you, too."  
"I..."  
She looked around. Lisa and Tina were staring at her, not blinking. Jill stood up, still holding her hot dog and soda. All the players on the field had stopped, too. They were staring up at her, hands on their hips.  
Everyone in the bleachers was looking at her. Just a few rows below her, twenty or thirty children sat, turned halfway around in their seats to see her. They were all wearing white.  
"Jesus," Jill said.  
"Yeah," Eric said. "I gotta go. Got a few friends to meet up with. See you soon, though."  
She looked around but he was gone. Lisa stood up next to her, blood pouring from the slice in her neck. Tina stood up next, her chest a bloody mess. They were all zombies, everyone here in the bleachers and everyone out there on the field. Jill's mind expanded and she knew, instinctively, that this whole world was filled zombies, hungry, shambling creatures.  
Her hot dog was not beef anymore. It was a small baby's arm wrapped in a bun. And her soda? Carbonated blood.  
She dropped them, kicked them aside. The zombies started towards her. She jumped down the bleachers, one or two rows at a time, heading for the ground. It was hairy, those creatures coming for her all the time.  
She managed to get onto the field, hopping down from the bleachers and landing on the AstroTurf. The football player zombies shambled towards her and she rushed away, slipping for a moment, regaining her balance. She ran towards the Phys Ed building, which was just off the field, looking for the Dream Pool along the way.  
Someone was blocking her way, someone else who was already dead. She came to a stop.  
"Daddy?" she said.  
Bill Snyder stood in front of the Phys Ed building. His arms were extended in a welcoming gesture. Jill was cautious, backed away a few steps.  
Above them, the skies darkened, clouds gathering. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed as the clouds opened up, rain coming down in sheets. Jill was immediately soaked.  
"Come here, baby," her father said. "Everything will be okay."  
"No," Jill said, shaking her head. "You're dead, Dad. Freddy got to you, somehow."  
"That's ridiculous. I'm right here."  
"This is a dream. I know it's a dream."  
The ground around her was full of puddles now and she smiled. The Dream Pool had come to her. Was it Gale, helping out somehow? She didn't know, didn't care.  
The moment her father changed into Freddy, she was already jumping into one of the pools. She called to him as the Pool enveloped her:  
"Come on, Freddy! You'll never catch me!"

6

Jill, Gale and Tiffany all emerged from the Dream Pool at the same time, crashing to the ground in a heap. Tiffany's skateboard banged into Gale's head: it would have left a knot if this was the waking world.  
"We made it!" Tiffany said.  
The three of them hugged, pure delight on their faces. Gale and Tiffany kissed while Jill watched them with a sad smile.  
"Wait, where's Eric?" Gale asked.  
"He didn't make it," Jill said.  
"Oh, God," Tiffany said.  
"Fuck," Gale said.  
Jill shook her head. She put a hand on Gale and Tiffany's shoulders.  
"We can't dwell on it," she said. "We have to keep moving. Freddy is following us, I just know it. We have to stick to the plan."  
"Right," Gale said.  
Tiffany nodded. The three of them got up. Gale picked up her baseball bat from the ground while Tiffany tucked her skateboard under one arm. Looking around, they found that they were in a vast cornfield. The rows were like a maze, all of them leading towards a massive House in the center of the cornfield: 1428 Elm, looking about ten times its normal size. The House towered over everything, clouds bumping up against its roof. The moon was dwarfed in comparison.  
"Well, that's where we're going, I guess," Gale said.  
"Seems about right," Jill said.  
They started towards the House, heading through the corn maze. It was eerily quiet, no bugs, no animals, only the sound of the wind rustling through the stalks of corn. Jill kept expecting to see something stagger into their path from the mass of corn, something inhuman and hulking, something that walks behind the rows. But there was nothing, just the wind and the corn and, beyond, the House, looking down on them.  
It was almost worse this way: not knowing when or where Freddy would strike. The three of them walked in silence. Jill didn't know about the others but she was contemplating Eric's death, and wondering about their bodies back at the boiler room. Were they safe? What if they defeated Freddy only to be stabbed to death in the real world by some scary, deranged tramp with a screwdriver? She shook her head, pushed the thought out of her mind. She couldn't think about that, didn't have the time or luxury to do so.  
There was a rustling in the corn near them. Gale shared a look with Jill, nodded. She raised her bat, ready for whatever was about to come through the stalks and onto the path. Sweat poured down her brow and under her arms and breasts. Whatever was out there would be on them any second now. It pushed through the corn and onto the path right next to them.  
It was a girl, a year or two younger than Gale and Jill.  
Gale almost hit her, stopped when she saw her. The girl was blonde, pretty, with a somewhat sad, forlorn look. Right now she also looked scared, confused.  
"Jesus, you scared us!" Gale said.  
"Don't you know it's bad to sneak up on people!" Tiffany said. "Especially in here!"  
"It's okay," Jill said, put an arm around the girl. "What's your name?"  
"Kristen," the girl said. "Kristen Parker."  
"Yeah, I know her," Tiffany said. "Kind of quiet, sticks mostly to herself in school."  
"So she's not dead, then?" Gale said.  
"Not that I know of."  
"Dead?" Kristen said. "Why would I be dead?"  
"It's nothing," Gale said. "How did you get here?"  
"Well, it'll sound dumb."  
"Try us," Tiffany said.  
"I used to be able to pull people into my dreams. My mom, mostly. But it's been a long time. But tonight, I was dreaming..."  
"What were you dreaming about?" Jill said.  
Kristen shrugged.  
"A boy in school," she said.  
"Which boy?" Jill said, smiling.  
"Rick. He's cool."  
"Rick, there you go! So you were dreaming about him and then what?"  
"I could feel you guys. It was like radar or something. I knew you were here, so I walked through the wall and came out here."  
"There wasn't a body of water involved?" Gale said.  
"Body of water?" Kristen said.  
"Like a pond or pool or something?"  
"No, nothing like that. I just came here."  
"Jesus. You're pretty powerful. I can't do anything like that."  
Kristen shrugged again, looked away, embarrassed. They cleared the corn maze, emerging onto the front lawn of the House. It loomed over them, although Jill noticed that now it looked fairly normal in size, not as giant as it was from a distance. Kristen spotted the House and was horrified.  
"Oh, God, what is that?" she said.  
"It's a bad place," Gale said.  
"I don't like it," Kristen said.  
Kristen looked up into an open window on the second floor. Something moved up there in that room, something that took a human shape but wasn't human at all, not anymore. She only got a brief glimpse of him but it was enough.  
Kristen had seen Freddy for the first time.  
"There was someone up there," she said.  
"Forget about him," Gale said. "I mean really forget about him. Don't think about him. Your life could depend on it."  
Gale pulled Jill aside while Tiffany stayed close to Kristen, trying to comfort her. Gale and Jill whispered their conversation.  
"We have to get her out of here," Gale said. "We have a job to do and she doesn't deserve to get tangled up in it."  
"Agreed," Jill said. "What should we do?"  
Gale shook her head.  
"I don't want to hurt her," she said. "But that's not really what I'm worried about."  
"What is it, then?" Jill said.  
"What if Freddy is able to get to her after all this? Because she saw the House, saw him?"  
It was Jill's turn to shake her head.  
"We can't worry about that," she said. "We'll just have to hope that doesn't happen."  
"So how do you want to wake her up?" Gale said.  
"A quick poke with something sharp should do it."  
"I said I didn't want to hurt her."  
"I'll do it, you don't have to."  
"No, no, I'm the bitch here. I'll do it." She broke apart from Jill, turned to Kristen. "Hey, pretty little thing, this is gonna hurt a bit but it'll save your life...hopefully."  
She reached out and pulled a Misfits pin off Tiffany's jacket and grabbed Kristen's hand. Before the girl could protest, Gale quickly stabbed her in the arm, below her elbow. Kristen yelped in pain, then quickly faded away, back into the waking world.  
"That must have hurt," Tiffany said.  
"She's better off," Gale said. "We don't want him to get to her."  
Tiffany nodded.  
"Let's go," Jill said.  
They entered the House. Jill was focused, thinking of the stairwell in Dr. Saunders' building. She was memorizing the layout, getting ready to use it when the time came.  
The place was its usual eerie self: empty hallways, broken down rooms, strange sounds all over the place. There was a pile of dead leaves in one corner of the entryway. Gale approached it, confused.  
There was something strange about the pile, something not right at all. The leaves were moving, and not in the wind. Moving with purpose. Gale stared for a moment, then backed away.  
"Oh, God," she said. "No fucking way."  
It wasn't a pile of dead leaves at all. It was a pile of cockroaches. A strong gust of supernatural wind whipped up, blew the cockroaches into the air. Gale screamed, glad that she didn't have hair that the bugs could get tangled up in. The bugs swarmed all over the three girls and soon they couldn't see each other.  
Freddy had separated them again.

7

Tiffany pushed at a door. It wouldn't budge. She hit it with her skateboard several times and finally the old wood shattered and she went through the doorway. She emerged into what looked like a library, of the kind that one would see in an old mansion, large and expansive.  
She didn't stop to admire it but kept moving forward. Freddy was behind her, she could feel him. She jumped on her skateboard and raced through the house, passing through room after room, hallway after hallway.  
She didn't know how long she would be able to stay ahead of the bastard.

8

Gale screamed again and again. Cockroaches were the one thing that she hated more than any other creature on the planet. She beat at her body, whirled around, ran from the entryway.  
She ran upstairs and emerged onto the second floor. It didn't look anything like the outside. There was a long hallway lit with old candelabra. Gale ran down the hallway, pretty sure she was free of roaches by now. The hallway gradually changed. It was now lined with mirrors. She was reflected in all of them, each one showing a different Gale.  
In some, she was old and frail, in others younger than she was now, in still others middle-aged and looking depressed. She watched as her true reflection - the one she was looking at now - started to age rapidly. She could feel herself weakening. It wouldn't be long and she would be nothing but a pile of old bones on the ground.

9

Jill didn't run.  
She wasn't afraid of the roaches. In fact, she laughed, snatched one out of the air and crushed it in the palm of her hand. She stepped on others, swatted some in front of her.  
This was just a distraction. Freddy was trying to rattle them. She shook her head. It wasn't going to work.  
"Enough!" she shouted.  
Instantly, all the roaches dropped to the ground, dead. Jill smiled, then frowned. Gale and Tiffany were gone. Freddy's trick had worked on them. She knew that Gale hated roaches but was disappointed, anyway.  
She stepped out of the entryway, crushing dead bugs underfoot as she went. She looked for a door, found one and opened it. It led down to the boiler room. She just knew it.  
She had to make sure Freddy followed her, got him off her friends' backs. But how?  
"Think, damn it!" she said.  
She looked at the old, rusting metal of the staircase railing. There were sharp edges all over it. Normally, a cut from one of those would wake her up. But she had been sedated, quite heavily.  
Not sparing another moment, she raked her arm down one of the sharper pieces of jagged metal. It was painful and she bled profusely.  
"Come on, Freddy!" she yelled out. "Come and get me!"  
She spread blood on the ground and behind her as she headed down the stairs, down into the dark. The loss of blood was already starting to make her feel weak.

10

All at once, Tiffany knew that Krueger wasn't behind her anymore. His presence was gone. And she also knew, instinctively that Jill was hurt. She could feel the girl's pain, could smell her blood. Abruptly, she turned around and headed back the way she had come, looking for a way down, trying to follow the plan.  
"I'm coming, Jill," she said. "I'm coming!"

11

Gale fought against whatever was aging her in the mirror but she was losing. It was hard enough to hold the bat in her hands, let alone do anything with it. She collapsed to her knees. What was the use? Freddy was going to win. It didn't matter what they did.  
"No," she said.  
She thought of Tiffany. Thought of some kind of life together with this girl, this person she loved.  
"No!" she screamed.  
She used her last bit of strength to swing the bat as hard as she could. It connected with the mirror, which shattered, glass flying everywhere. Instantly, Gale felt renewed, felt her old self return. She looked up at the hole in the wall where the mirror used to be, smiled.  
The Dream Pool came rushing towards her, crashing into her. The beautiful, dark-haired woman came with it, picked her up, carried her along its currents. As she was traveling, Gale saw Tiffany, on her skateboard. She reached out, grabbed her lover, took her with them. Jill would need both of them if she was going to get out of this alive.

12

Jill staggered down the stairs. Blood dripped from her arm and onto each step, making a loud, echoing sound each time. She knew Freddy was near. It had worked. He had followed her. She had already started to turn the staircase into the insane, winding staircase of Dr. Saunders' building. Freddy was no doubt already confused.  
But how long could she last?  
It didn't matter. She had to get to the bottom ahead of Freddy, had to stick to the plan. All of a sudden, she heard the sound of rushing waves and Gale and Tiffany were by her side.  
"Jesus," Gale said, seeing Jill's arm.  
Tiffany tore a piece of her shirt off, tied it around Jill's wound. Jill hugged the two girls.  
"I didn't know if you were gonna make it," she said.  
"You kidding?" Gale said. "We wouldn't miss this for the world."  
They ran down the stairs now, Jill's strength restored, at least for the time being. They could hear Freddy in pursuit but he was always behind them, not used to the winding, unfamiliar staircase.  
"There it is!" Tiffany said.  
They reached the bottom, and emerged into the boiler room, its harsh metal surfaces lit with that horrible, reddish light, steam rising all over. The three of them headed towards the nearest furnace, a classic black metal affair, not unlike the furnaces in most of their own basements.  
"Here," Jill said. "This will do. This is it."  
She stared at the furnace, concentrating, as Freddy emerged into the boiler room behind them, laughing. He strutted towards them, taking his time. He took his hat off, adjusted it, put it back on.  
"Looks like you've been giving me the runaround," he said. "Whole lot of fancy footwork just to get to where I wanted you to go all along!"  
He laughed again, brandished his blades. Tiffany went after him first, skating towards him. He knocked her aside with one swift push. The girl fell off the skateboard in a heap.  
"Now, Gale!" Jill said.  
Gale stepped in front of Jill and swung her baseball bat at the furnace. It started to shatter like glass. Freddy looked puzzled. Tiffany sat up, unharmed.  
"We're ready for you, Krueger!" Jill said.  
Gale swung again and again, destroying the furnace and revealing something else beneath it, something Freddy recognized. It was an old, fearsome-looking refrigerator. Gale stepped aside when the fridge was fully uncovered. The massive metal beast lunged forward, its door opening and closing, hungry.  
"No!" Freddy said.  
Gale ran at the dream demon, swinging her baseball bat. Freddy caught the bat deftly with his left hand, threw the girl aside.  
Jill stood in front of the fridge, facing Freddy. She gestured for him to come at her.  
"Come on, Freddy," she said. "Come get me!"  
Freddy rushed towards her. Jill knew he wasn't stupid, knew that she was most likely going to jump out of the way, hoping that the fridge would get him. So she did something Freddy wouldn't expect.  
She stayed where she was, directly in front of his path.  
"No!" Gale screamed. "Jill!"  
Freddy jumped on Jill, claws first. His four razored fingers tore into Jill just below her neck. The pain was immense but she kept hold of Freddy. The two of them fell in what felt like slow motion. Jill turned during the fall, using Freddy's strength against him. At exactly the right moment, she kicked Krueger away from her. His claws were violently ripped from her body, tearing away flesh and bone.  
Freddy was tossed into the snatching jaws of the fridge. For one brief moment, they all could see him inside the fridge, shaking and terrified. He began to scream and then the fridge slammed shut, sealing him inside.  
The fridge roared, shook, rattled its chains. Freddy fought inside it, trying to get out, but it was no good. A childhood fear had come to claim him.  
Here in a landscape dominated - created, even - by them.  
Gale and Tiffany ran to Jill's side. Gale cradled Jill. The dying girl's blood soaked Gale's clothes and got all over her skin. She was bleeding out fast. Gale held onto her. The red light behind them began to dim.  
"No," Gale said, crying. "No, why did you do that? What the fuck were you thinking, you stupid bitch?"  
"It..." Jill managed to say, "only way..."  
She died, eyes going blank, staring up at Gale. The dreamworld died with her, the light fading rapidly, the boiler room falling apart around them. It felt like a 10.5 earthquake hit the world, and Apocalypse had come. A chorus of screaming children hurt the two girls' ears. Everything was dying.  
Tiffany held onto Gale, who continued to hold onto Jill. They stayed there for some time before returning to the waking world.  
And escape.

Epilogue: You Are Now Leaving Springwood

They just made one stop on their way out of town. They didn't know how long the road ahead of them would be. They had money, they had gas, but they needed a few more supplies. The little shop on the outskirts of town seemed like the best idea.  
Tiffany stayed in the car while Gale went inside to buy what they needed. They had discussed everything that had happened up to this point.  
Their first order of business was to start taking Hypnocil. This they did with relish.  
After this, they debated what to do with the bodies of Jill and Eric, still lying on the cold ground of the boiler room in the real world. They decided to carry them to Eric's car and lay them down carefully in the front and backseats. They couldn't bear to leave them in that place, even dead.  
They felt that they had to move fast. Tiffany was meant to be taken under the state's care and shuffled off to God knows where. Also, they were both almost certainly wanted in connection with at least several unexplained deaths by this point.  
They weren't too worried. Cops in Springwood are not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, and the people of the town knew how to keep a secret.  
Springwood was a town made of secrets. They knew that now.  
As Gale was inside the store getting supplies, Tiffany looked out the window, arms resting on the windowsill, taking in her last glimpse of the town where she had lived her entire life. Emotions flashed by like the blades of a fan: loss, fear, nostalgia, elation, excitement, love.  
She leaned back in the passenger seat and looked up at the rearview mirror in passing. Someone moved in the backseat. Tiffany whirled around to look into the back but there was nothing.  
"Something wrong?" Gale said.  
She approached the car, a bag of supplies in her hand. Tiffany shook her head.  
"Thought I saw something," Tiffany said. "That's all."  
"Okay," Gale said.  
She got into the car, sitting in the driver's seat behind the wheel. Tiffany leaned over and they kissed. It was the best one yet but one tinged with sadness and the weight of loss.  
"Are you ready?" Gale asked.  
"Yeah," Tiffany said.  
Gale revved the car, got it going. They sped down the road, past the "You Are Now Leaving Springwood" sign, not quite knowing where they were going.  
And, somewhere in Springwood, a girl named Kristen Parker woke up from a dream she couldn't quite remember; something about a House and a horrible man. The dream may have faded now but, soon enough, it would come again.  
And again.  
And again.  
The nightmare never truly ended, not really.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this fan novel several years ago now. It originated on a Nightmare on Elm Street fan forum but I put it up on Adult Fanfiction later. It seemed too gruesome for regular fanfiction.com. I have decided to put it here because I feel like this will be a more permanent place for my fan works going forward.  
> I think I'm a better writer now and could do better with this book, but I have decided not to revise it and just put it up here in all its ugly glory. It reflects a time in my writing life that is a part of me, like it or not.  
> I hope have enjoyed it. Let me know what you think.


End file.
